


All Over Again

by BleedingInk



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Human, Comedy, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, M/M, Meg is the Winchester's stepsister, Minor Character(s), Past Relationship(s), Romance, Teen Romance, Weddings, just go with it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-09
Updated: 2017-10-09
Packaged: 2019-01-04 21:46:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 54,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12177144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BleedingInk/pseuds/BleedingInk
Summary: Meg goes back to her hometown for her stepbrother’s wedding. She’s not expecting to run into her high school sweetheart, Castiel, and she’s definitely not expecting to start having feelings for him once again. But it’s not like she was expecting it the first time either.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Megstiel Big Bang 2017!
> 
> Especial thanks to my artists, megsamforever and emmatheslayer, whose work you can check [here](http://inkbleeder.tumblr.com/post/166222129996/title-all-over-again-author-bleedingink-rating) and to my Beta, theroyalrosesworld, who provided songs and encouragement!

The night starts agitated with a triple crash and grows worse from there. Meg works for hours at the operating table, saving the lung punctured by a rib of one of the victims and trying to compose his broken bones. As bad a shape as that man was in, the woman who travelled in the car that ended sandwiched between the other two is even worse. Dr. Flagstaff requests her help as soon as she steps out of the first OR and Meg cringes as soon as she reads the report.

She shows no signs of brain activity at all.

“What do you need me for? There’s nothing we can do.”

“I know. I need you to tell that to the husband,” Flagstaff replies. “She was an organ donor, but he’s refusing to pull the plug.”

Meg twists her mouth. She has a reputation among the nurses for being a hardass, but ironically the other doctors think she has great bedside manners. That’s because Meg considers patience and empathy to be very limited resources, so she saves them all up for the people who really need them and deserve them.

She also knows what it’s like to be sitting in the ER waiting area at three in the morning, disheveled, tired and scared to death for their loved ones. So when she has to call Mr. Pike’s name twice before he looks up, she doesn’t hold it against him.

“I’m Dr. Masters,” she says, shaking his hand. “We need to talk about your wife, sir.”

The man looks at her wide-eyed and terrified, as if Meg is the very personification of death standing in front of him.

“They say she won’t wake up, but what if she does?” Mr. Pike says. Meg has the impression he’s been repeating that to himself internally for hours now. “People have woken up before. Joanie could wake up.”

“That is not going to happen, Mr. Pike,” Meg replies, as softly as she can.

Mr. Pike’s legs tremble and he has to sit back down. Calmly, Meg sits by his side and gives him the medical explanation first: Joanie was not really there anymore, the only thing keeping werw alive are the machines. Her mind, her soul (she notices he has a cross around his neck that he keeps on clutching as she speaks) were already gone. The only thing left was her body, which Joanie wanted to give to others so they could have a chance at life. It was his wife’s last wish and it is extremely generous of her. Meg knows it isn’t easy, but he needs to let go.

She can’t count how many times she has given that speech, how many false hopes of grieving children and husbands and brothers and parents she has dissipated. She’s had philosophical and even religious debates with some (the “God is trying to bring them home” line never failed), she’s offered her shoulder for them to cry on and she’s talked to them to the process of what they needed to do. It’s a terrible skill to have, but Meg guesses there are worse.

Mr. Pike signs the correspondent forms with trembling hands.

“Can we wait an hour until my son gets here?” he asks in a whisper. “A friend is driving him from college…”

“Of course.”

Meg is in the room when Matt and Mr. Pike, each holding one of Mrs. Pike’s hand, say their goodbyes. She herself turns off the machine and takes off the oxygen mask from her face while a nurse calls the time of death. She then escorts Mrs. Pike’s family out of the room and assures them once more that they did the right thing.

It’s exhausting and emotionally draining, so Meg is relieved when finally her shift ends and she can go home. Not that home is a much better place right now. Her ex-boyfriend things that she keeps promising to pack up and send to him are still scattered all over the living room, but when she can ignore that when she’s too tired to think about anything except crawling into bed and wrapping herself in some blankets to get some well-earned 12 hours of sleep.

She’s rudely awaken by her phone not even three hours later. She groans and considers ignoring it, but it might be a hospital emergency and she can’t really ignore that. So in the end, she rolls over, feels around the floor until her fingers graze the phone. She forces her eyes open (dammit, she forgot to turn down the brightness) and doesn’t even try to suppress a yawn when she answers.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Meg,” a male voice says on the other end. It sounds far too cheery for Meg’s taste.

“Who is this?”

“It’s… Sam. Your brother.”

“My brother’s name is Tom.”

“Your other brother, Meg.”

Meg brain finally catches up to what’s going on and who is at the other end of the line, but the realization doesn’t make any more sense.

“Oh. Sam. Yes, hi,” she mumbles, rubbing her eyes. “Uh… why are you calling? Is everything okay?”

“No, yeah, everything is fine,” Sam says. He doesn’t seem surprised that she would ask that. The last time Meg saw or talked to him was at her father’s funeral, four years before. “Actually, it’s good news. Dean is getting married.”

Meg blinks a couple of time and pinches the bridge of her nose. When she opens her eyes again, her room remains the same and she’s still holding her cellphone to her ear. So, she’s not dreaming. Sam is really calling her at… okay, it’s ten in the morning, so for normal people, that’s a reasonable time to call. He has no way to know Meg keeps odd hours at the hospital and that she spent the entire night dealing with human tragedy. But still she can barely manage to hide her irritation at him.

“Good for him, I guess.”

Sam realizes that she’s not fully paying attention to him and when Meg explains the reason, he hastily apologizes and promises to call her later that evening.

Meg crashes back into the bed and tries to go back to sleep. But Sam’s voice manages to get her to do something she usually avoids: it’s got her thinking about the past.

 

* * *

 

The first time Meg laid eyes on the little house where she would be living for the next two years of her life, she immediately wished wish that she could slid back into the car and drive all the way back to California, to her friends and her school and the old apartment she shared with her dad and her brother. The house had a porch and a yard, the front was painted white and the wide windows seemed to be looking at her from above. It was pretty, she supposed. The problem it was that it was smack down in the middle of the suburbs of Lawrence, Kansas (population: 60.000 souls), half a country away from everything Meg held dear.

Being sixteen years old and not very familiar with the concept of a middle ground, Meg decided she hated it entirely.

Her father, however, was far too pleased to realize what was going on.

“Aren’t you happy, Meggie?” he asked, putting an arm around her shoulder and hugging her close. “We’re finally going to be a real family!”

Meg couldn’t even force a smile at the prospect, but Azazel Masters was far too happy to notice her lack of enthusiasm.

The door opened and Mary Winchester stepped outside. She was also smiling radiantly, her blonde hair forming a halo around her face. It was easy to see why her father was so in love with her.

“You’re here!” she exclaimed running towards them.

Azazel opened his arms to receive her, dipped her down and kissed her. When they straightened up, Azazel picked her up from the floor and spun around with her. The both of them were laughing, so happy that they barely noticed the misery their children were radiating.

Dean was leaning against the door’s frame, arms crossed over his chest and jaw clenched tight. Everything about his posture gave away exactly how furious he was about that entire situation. Sam, who was twelve at the time and still haven’t gone through the growth spurts that would turn him into the star of the basketball team a few years down the road, looked troubled, almost hiding behind his older brother.

“Boys, come here,” Mary called them. “Let’s help Az and Meg with their boxes.”

“I’d rather shoot myself,” Dean said.

“Dean!”

“No, it’s okay, Mary, it’s okay,” Azazel said, refusing to lose his smile. “We’re gonna have some growing pains while we’re adjusting. It’s fine.”

Dean huffed, turned his back on them and stalked inside the house. Sam hesitated for a moment on the door, but finally he climbed down the steps and stood near the car’s boot until they found a box light enough for him to carry inside.

“Hello again,” Sam greeted her.

“Hey, short stuff,” Meg said.

Somehow, that moment ended up defining Meg’s entire relationship to her stepbrothers.

The autumn leaves crunched under her feet as she approached the house. It was very homely and just as nice inside; that was undeniable. There were pictures of Sam and Dean on the shelves, books and a big TV in the middle of the living room. Sam guided Meg towards the stairs.

“You’re going to be staying in Dean’s room,” he told her. Clearly, he was trying to play the gracious host. “He and I are going to be sharing rooms from now on.”

“Ah, so that’s why he’s so pissed off.”

“No!” Sam said, but immediately realized there was no point in lying. “Well, yeah. But it’s going to be fine. It’s gonna be like having a sleepover every night!”

He forced out a smile and Meg felt a little bit sorry for the kid. Clearly, he was trying to put on a good face for his mother, but he was as displeased with everything as Dean and Meg herself were.

It wasn’t like they didn’t have time to grow used to the idea though.

Meg’s mother had died when she was four, and ever since then, it had been just her, her dad and her older brother Tom. Meg was convinced they didn’t need anyone else, but sometimes her dad looked so forlorn and melancholic she sort of wish he had someone. She might as well have rubbed a monkey’s paw, because two years prior, Azazel had received a letter from an old college girlfriend, Mary Winchester (née: Campbell), telling him how she’d just got separated from her children’s father and was casually wondering how he was doing.

Meg had watched with amusement, and then with growing apprehension, how their relationship developed from there. For the first few months, there were just letters, then almost nightly phone calls. The following summer, while Dean and Sam were with their dad on a road trip, Mary had travelled to California to see Azazel for the first time in years.

Meg should have known how things were going to end when her dad’s eyes lit up upon seeing her coming down from the bus at the station, when he ran to hug her tight and how they both stared at each other for an excessively long time. She was still a bit in denial of what was going on, but Tom had seen it clearly.

“Aw, shit. The old man’s in love.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

Tom had snorted and Meg had hated forever how right he’d turned out to be.

Mary was supposed to stay for a week, but she’d ended up staying three. Later, during the Thanksgiving weekend, Azazel had driven Tom and Meg to meet up with Mary and her sons, Dean and Sam, in South Dakota. They had camped in front of Mount Rushmore despite the cold weather. Tom was the oldest with seventeen, Meg and Dean were both fifteen and Sam was eleven (“And a half!”). They had glanced at each other with uneasiness over the food, but they’d kept the conversation light and amicable while Mary and Azazel were looking and gone completely silent when they weren’t.

Meg now wished they had started an all-out brawl between them, because obviously that had given the lovebirds the wrong idea: that they were perfectly okay with them having a relationship and that it would be just peachy if they decided to move in together and join both their families. And so, there she was, not even a year after Mount Rushmore, putting down a box with her things on the room that had belonged to Dean. Because Mary’s divorce was finalized and now she and Azazel were getting married that spring.

The very idea made Meg’s stomach churn. Not that she was too fond of her mother’s memory (she barely had any, to be honest), but it felt like her family had fallen apart from one day to the next. She could always count on her dad and her brother to be there for her. Tom teased her, but he always ended up doing what she asked of him, and of course, her father treated her like a fucking princess.

But now her dad only seemed to have eyes for his fiancée, Tom was in college and Meg was stuck with two boys she barely knew, one of which was openly hostile to her, as replacements.

Dean appeared in her new room’s door and stared daggers into her as Meg cut the tape that held her boxes closed.

“What? Is there something on my face?” Meg asked, rolling her eyes at him.

“Don’t get too comfy in here,” Dean told her. “My mom might be happy right now, but I don’t trust your dad. If he does something to hurt her…”

Meg almost burst out laughing in his face. She was absolutely sure her dad could be brutal against people who pissed him off, but she was also certain that he would not have abandoned sunny California and his high end job for boring as fuck Kansas and a second rate position if he wasn’t absolutely sure Mary was the love of his life.

But she wasn’t about to validate Dean’s paranoia.

“Whatever, tough guy,” Meg told him. “Now, if you excuse me, I need to get settled.”

She pushed him out and slammed the door in his face.

 

* * *

 

Meg isn’t exactly close to her stepbrothers. Years of forced cohabitation and the occasional awkward holiday spent in their company after high school didn’t manage to make them good friends. She has Sam as a Facebook contact and he occasionally likes her pictures and leaves birthday well-wishes in her wall.

She hasn’t even talked Dean in four years. She can’t possibly fathom why Sam would think she’d care if he gets married or dies alone and gets eaten by cockroaches.

She still calls Sam back after waking up at five and making herself some coffee. Sam apologizes again for disturbing her sleep.

“I didn’t know you were on the night shift. I’m sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter, Samuel,” Meg replies with a huff. “Just… what is that nonsense about Dean getting married?”

“Right, yes. He’s getting married in April. He was… hesitant to invite you, but in the end he decided to go ahead. Your invitation should arrive soon.”

Which means that Dean didn’t want to invite her, at all, but Sam convinced him to do so anyway. Meg still can’t figure out why.

“So… will you be coming?”

“Oh, God, so glad he thought of me,” Meg says, not even trying to hide her contempt. “But see, I’m very busy…”

“Meg, please,” Sam interrupts her and Meg just knows that wherever he is, he is doing his kicked puppy face. “Dean just… he needs all the support he can gather right now.”

“Okay,” Meg says after a stunned pause. “Explain.”

Dean is marrying some guy named Benny. Meg is and isn’t surprised at the same time. Having shared a household with Dean in their late teens, she learned a thing or two about him and one of them was his attraction to dudes. She also knows Dean was so far in the closet that he was probably crowned Queen of Narnia. Good for him for coming out and finding someone, she guesses.

“The thing is… our dad kind of freaked out about it. I mean, it wasn’t bad, but… yeah,” Sam says. “So Dean was really down in the dumps for it and he almost called the whole thing off. So…”

“Look, I get it,” Meg sighs. “I still don’t think I’m the right person to come to for support…”

“Just… please think about it,” Sam insists. “It would really mean a lot to Dean.”

Meg hangs up without making any promises. She feels for Dean (not really), but there are very few things she would enjoy less than going back to Lawrence for his wedding.

She showers, gets dressed and drinks another cup of coffee while looking at the half empty boxes spread on the carpet and over the table and couch. She really ought to finish looking for Luc’s things and putting them away to give them back to him. She just… doesn’t have the energy for it.

She knew it was a bad idea to date someone from work. It was just really hard to meet someone with the long hours she had to work and the odd shifts she took sometimes. Her ex-boyfriend, however, didn’t seem to have a problem at maintaining two additional relationships at the same time, one with a nurse at the hospital and another with some chick he met through Tinder. Meg still isn’t sure if she should give his things back or just throw them into a dumpster. And then set the dumpster on fire.

She will decide later. For now, she has to go back to the hospital and do her damn job.

She does her rounds: the patient she operated the night before is doing well and expected to do a physical recovery. Mentally, he is still trying to process the fact he was involved in an accident that cost a woman her life. Meg pats him on the shoulder, telling him he’s lucky to be alive and the patient’s mother interjects that is a miracle.

“God was protecting you last night,” she says, holding her son’s hand.

Meg tries not to seem too irritated until she leaves the room. God had nothing to do with it: it was her who spent hours on the operating table. And if God was so mighty and nice, then why did he let Joanie Pike to die?

So already she’s not in the best mood when Luc comes to talk to her near the water-cooler.

“Good night, Meg. Heard you saved another one last night.”

“I was just doing my job,” Meg replies coldly. “What do you want?”

Luc smiles at her, either doesn’t notice or ignores the hostility she’s displaying. He’s a brilliant surgeon and like many of them, a complete narcissist. Meg has to really make an effort to remember why the hell she liked him in the first place. It’s not easy. She supposes it has something to do with the way his grey eyes shine and the dimples in his smile, the confidence in his step. He’s not hard to look at, but again, she couldn’t have done better.

“You’re not still mad at me now, are you?”

“What do you want?” she repeats, ignoring the question, and Luc finally relents.

“Crowley wants to talk to us.”

“Why?” Meg narrows her eyes with suspicion.

The hospital administrator has never been in her good grace and she’s absolutely certain he was just looking for an excuse to fire her. One of the reasons she actually chose the night shift was because she knew he liked to go home early, so she didn’t have to see him all that often. Maybe that is her being paranoid, but her dad taught her to trust her gut and her gut tells her Crowley dislikes her as much as she dislikes him.

It’s just little things: the way he will bitch and moan every time she requests his permission for a dangerous procedure, how he will call her numbers into question when he doesn’t do that to other doctors, how he will call her into his office just to tell her the nurses complained about her again. (Meg is also half-convinced the nurse Luc was messing around with thinks she was the one who was cheated on and has been spreading rumors about her since, but she doesn’t care enough about her to correct her).

Luc shrugs. He’s obviously not bothered by the animosity between his boss and his ex.

“He didn’t say. Just that we should go as soon as we can.”

Meg stares at him, incredulous. He knew this, he knew that Crowley wanted to talk to her and he waited an hour before he came to tell her? Now Crowley is going to be pissed at her, specifically, because he wanted to go home (as if everybody else in the world doesn’t want the same thing) and she kept him waiting.

“Why, thank you for telling me.”

“Happy to help,” Luc says, grinning.

Meg gulps down the rest of her water and throws the plastic cup in the garbage can before marching towards the elevator. She’s mentally reminding herself that prison won’t be anything like Orange Is The New Black, so committing double homicide just because people irritate her isn’t really on the table for her.

“Ah, so she decides to join us,” Crowley exclaims as soon as she and Luc walk into his office. “Such consideration.”

Meg ignores the jab. Instead, she focuses on the fact that Crowley has gained weight. He’s short and she knows for a fact that he has a propensity for whiskey, so maybe a stroke or a heart attack aren’t too far around the corner. The thought soothes her.

“Dr. Milton said you wanted to see me,” she says, trying to keep her tone professional and distant.

“Yes, please, have a seat, both of you,” Crowley says. Usually he would keep Meg guessing and subtly insult her a little bit more, but in his mind, he’s probably already at home sipping scotch in a robe. (She doesn’t know for sure he has a robe, he just strikes her as the kind). “I called you here because our hospital has been invited to participate in a conference about new surgical technologies. I have decided you two should go, since you’re the best surgeons on our hospital. Well, one more so than the other.”

Luc’s grin grows even wider, because of course Crowley isn’t talking about Meg. She resists the urge to roll her eyes, but she can’t help the poison in her voice when she asks:

“Well, if you don’t think I’m on the same level as Dr. Milton, then why have you selected me to go?”

Crowley taps his fingers on the desk. He looks mad that Meg called him out on it.

“You see, due to budgetary constraints, the hospital was only able to book one room for the conference,” he explains. “And since you two are in a… interpersonal relationship, I thought you wouldn’t mind.”

Luc’s grin disappears and Meg bites back a laugh. “Budgetary constraints” her ass; Crowley is just the worst kind of cheapskate to ever manage a hospital.

“It’s not a problem, is it?”

Luc looks around as if he’s trying to find a way out. Meg decides they have nothing to do by being brutally honest.

“Actually yes, it is. Dr. Milton and I have broken up.”

She adds nothing, but she feels a tinge of satisfaction to see a shade of red creeping up Luc’s neck. It must be really humiliating for oh, so successful Dr. Milton to have to reveal in front of his boss that his personal life is a mess.

Crowley is also disgruntled about this turn of events. He huffs and looks at them frowning, as if they had betrayed him somehow.

“Why hasn’t HR informed of this?” he complains. Immediately, he regains his composure and intertwines his fingers, almost like a principal about to drop some bad news on the parents of a misbehaving kid. “My, oh, my, but this is a problem. I already took the liberty of making the reservation. I don’t know if we can manage to get another room, but perhaps I can have you moved to one with separate beds?”

Meg is entirely too sure Crowley isn’t even going to attempt that. Luc shifts awkwardly in his chair, but it seems he also can’t come up with a solution to this.

“When is this conference again?” she asks.

“The second weekend of April.”

The relief that washes over her can’t be overstated.

“Oh, no, I can’t make it,” she says, trying (and failing) to look apologetic. “I have a family thing. My brother Dean is getting married that weekend.”


	2. Chapter 2

 

Castiel is usually acutely aware of his own mistakes. His social awkwardness wouldn’t allow it to be any other way. If he makes one in front of a stranger, he’s probably going to be apologizing for hours about it and then seriously consider finding a remote island where he can hide away from society at large.

However, there are people he feels more comfortable around. And if he makes a mistake around them, he will apologize for sure. But he’ll also reserve the right to get a little irritated when they keep bringing it up after he did.

“If we have taken the other exit, we would be there already.”

“Yes, you’ve told me this,” Castiel replies, not taking his eyes off the road.

It’s kind of humiliating, getting lost on the way to his own hometown. But he can’t really be blamed: how was he supposed to know they were going to build another highway?

“If you visited mom and dad more often, you would’ve known,” Hannah says.

Castiel groans and refuses to answer to his sister’s interjection. He calls their parents on their birthdays and sends a Christmas card every year. What more is it expected of him?

Hannah is annoyed for other reasons too.

“They’ve been inviting you to come home for ages and you keep refusing. Dean Winchester invites you once and you drop everything and come?”

“It’s a job, Hannah. I’m actually very glad he thought of me for this,” Castiel replies. He has a déjà vu sensation and realizes they’ve had this exact same argument many times before. “It means he values what I do.”

“They value what you do too!”

That is debatable. If it had been up to them (well, up to his mother, because he didn’t think his father cared enough to have an opinion), he would’ve studied pre-med or pre-law or some other things to earn him… how did his mother put it? “A respectable profession”.

“You know she didn’t mean it like that,” Hannah protests, but she gives up. She knows there’s no point in arguing, partially because Castiel is right.

And he knows there’s no point in arguing with her. Hannah and the rest of their siblings forgave their father when he had gone through steps eight and nine, but Castiel struggled a little with it. Yes, he could be decent in front of him, but that didn’t mean he wanted to have a trusting and loving relationship with him. His dad simply had left him down too many times for it. And it wasn’t like his mother was that much better. Since she couldn’t control her husband, she had instead tried to have tight control over her children’s lives. Not that it was easy, taking into account that there were six of them. At least in Gabriel’s and Castiel’s cases, she had failed altogether.

So no, Castiel isn’t thrilled at the prospect of seeing them and spending the weekend in their old home. But when Dean called and announced him he was getting married, of course Castiel immediately made plans for going back. Dean is oldest and dearest friend. He would do anything for him. Even facing his parents and accepting their subtle reproaches for never visiting them.

At least he’s had plenty of time to practice his poker face and noncommittal groans with Hannah by the time they actually find the right highway and begin cruising Lawrence’s suburbs. It astonishes Castiel a little bit how nothing seemed to have changed at all. The same houses line up on the same streets, with the same front yards and the same gardens. The children playing in them have changed a little bit and the cars parked outside are different models. But if it wasn’t for that, Castiel could have almost believed the town had remained untouched by time.

Their house looks the same too, downright to the swing tier hanging from the tree in front. Naomi opens the door as soon as they parked, obviously having been waiting for them right next to the window.

“You’re late!” she says. She looks well: she has tied her brown hair in a severe bun and she’s frowning, like always.

“Good to see you too, mother,” Castiel comments as they get out of the car.

Both his mother and his sister ignore him. Hannah kisses Naomi on both cheeks and smiles.

“Castiel got lost in the intersection,” she informs her.

“It was confusing!”

Naomi shakes her head and sighs, almost as if she didn’t expect any different from him. She offers her cheek for him to kiss and puts her arm around Hannah’s shoulders before pulling her towards the house.

“Well, it’s not an issue. I haven’t got your father to step away from the laptop. I’ll just reheat the lunch…”

Castiel misses what else his mother is saying about lunch, because he is left to pick up all their bags and take them inside. He’s struggling to get them when his father appears at the door too.

“Hey, kiddo,” he says, smiling. “Let me help you with those.”

“Thanks, dad,” Castiel says, a little wary.

But Chuck Shurley (Carver Edlund to his fans) doesn’t try to kiss him or hug him. He simply asks how their trip was and assures them he’s happy they got there alright. He has some new wrinkles around his blue eyes (the same that all his children except Gabriel have) and there are some grey hairs in his head and in his beard, but other than that, he also seems untouched by time.

“Your mom was fuzzing all day about your beds and how you were going to be sleeping,” he comments.

“Well, they have to be comfortable, don’t they?” Naomi replies from the kitchen. “Are you gonna want potatoes with your chicken, Castiel?”

“Actually, I should… I should be going,” Castiel says, after checking the time in his cellphone. “Dean is probably already expecting me. I was supposed to be there an hour ago.”

Naomi twists her mouth and Hannah squints at him. It’s obvious she suspects that’s just an excuse to avoid staying in the house longer than is necessary, but she decides against calling him out on it.

“Oh, yes. Of course,” Chuck says. His smile falters a little but ultimately manages to stay on. “You better get on that. Official wedding photographer and all.”

Castiel thinks he means it as a compliment, but it manages to sound slightly condescending. He comments nothing on this: he merely picks up his equipment and leaves the house.

The path to the Winchesters’ household feels familiar underneath his feet. He can’t count how many times he has made his way there; he has the impression he spent most of his teenage years in that house instead of his own.

So it’s kind of a shock when Mary opens the door and frowns at him for a moment.

“Mrs. Winchester?” he calls.

She recognizes him and the same radiant smile she always had dawns in her face.

“Castiel! Of course!” She extends her arms at him and envelopes him in a quick hug. “It’s so good to see you! Oh, God, it’s been years.”

“It’s good to see you too,” he says, smiling a little awkwardly. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything…”

“No, not at all,” Mary assures him. “Come on in!”

Castiel hasn’t taken two steps in when he’s hugged once more, this time by his best friend.

That has definitely changed. In the past, Dean would only greet him with a high five or a fist bump. But now he holds him tight for several seconds and pats his back before letting him go.

“You look good, man,” he says. His grin is so big the dimples in his cheeks look very deep. He has less freckles than when they were young, but his green eyes shine just the same. “You look very good.”

“You too,” Castiel manages to reply before Dean grabs him by the arm and drags him into the living room while screaming:

“Hey, Sammy, look who’s here!”

It’s funny to think that Sam used to be the shortest of their group, always trying to keep up with the rest of them, because now he’s grown into a massive man with broad shoulders. He’s also let his hair grow past the base of his neck and has stubble growing on his cheek. Definitely not the shy little boy that always insisted on being included in their plans anymore.

“Glad that you could make it,” Sam says.

“I wouldn’t miss it.”

“And of course, you gotta meet my better half,” Dean adds, gesturing to a man standing behind Sam. “This is Benny.”

“How you doing, chief?”

Benny is a burly man with light blue eyes and a thick beard. His smile is kind and his handshake firm. He isn’t what Castiel expected. Then again, he’s not sure what he was expecting. It was kind of a shock when Dean came out to him and even more of a shock when immediately after he announced he was getting married. None of those things quite fit with the idea Castiel had of his friend, but he’s happy for him. And also, he’s sure that Benny must be an extraordinary person if he managed to get Dean to overcome his chronic fear of commitment.

“Come into the kitchen, boys. I got the lemonade ready,” Mary urges them.

“So how did you and Dean meet?” Castiel asks, trying to make idle chat. He knows he’s not very good at it, but Dean and Benny seem more than happy to relate the story to them.

“I helped him do his job.”

“Oh, man, it was the funniest thing. So I was chasing this perp down the street and he just fled into Benny’s diner…”

Castiel is sure the rest of the anecdote is fascinating, but the second he steps into the kitchen, he stops listening to Dean.

There’s a dark haired woman in there, already pouring herself some lemonade. When she raises her eyes and meets Castiel’s, the glass slips slightly from her hand, but she manages to keep a hold of it. Castiel isn’t sure he could have if it had been him holding the glass. He isn’t sure how is supposed to react right now. Suddenly, his knees are trembling and his heart is thumping loud in his chest.

She recovers way faster than him, so fast he has to question if the surprise he saw on her face was there at all or not. She smirks and speaks with that smoky voice he knows so well:

“Well, hi there,” she says.

Castiel is still trying to find his voice, so maybe that’s what prompts her to step closer and add:

“Remember me? ‘Cause I sure remember you, Clarence.”

“Of-of course,” Castiel manages to stutter. “Hello, Meg.”

 

* * *

 

It wasn’t love at first sight, not really. But Castiel has to admit that he was crushing hard on her from the first time he saw her.

He remembers the night in question with pristine clarity. His parents were fighting. It was a common enough occurrence in the Shurley’s house, but it got to him every time. This night in particular, the fight was about Chuck’s alcohol intake (as it usually was), but also about the bills piling up and their inability to pay them. His two older brothers (Michael and Gabriel) were already in college, so they didn’t have to listen to this anymore. He could imagine Hannah, Samandriel and Hael, the three youngest ones, in Hannah’s room, hugging each other and pretending they weren’t hearing all of this.

He couldn’t pretend. He also couldn’t deal. Which is why he made use, not for the first time, of the trick Gabriel had taught him: he only needed to jump a little, hang on tight to the branches of the tree outside his window and jump through them until he was over the fence. The first few times he’d done it, he had been fairly terrified that he was going to fall and break his neck or worse, be caught by one of his parents looking out the window at the wrong time. By this point, however, he was an expert in those little escapades.

When his feet touched the ground and the cool autumn air filled his lungs, he felt infinitely better. He walked through the woods behind the houses, carefully counting the windows he passed by until he reached Dean’s house. The Winchesters’ backyard fence was broken, so Castiel always could slid inside with ease. All the windows in the house were darkened and just like every other person in the neighborhood, it seemed like they were fast asleep. Castiel picked three smalls pebbles from the ground and threw one at Dean’s window. He waited for a minute and frown. Usually Dean had light sleep. It didn’t take much to wake him up and even less to convince him to climb down and spend some time with him near the creek.

He threw another pebble and a golden light glimmered behind the glasses. That completely disconcerted Castiel. Dean was usually very careful not to let his parents know he was sneaking out, he would never risk…

The window opened and a round face with long dark hair appeared.

“Hey, genius, what’s the bright idea?” she asked, frowning at him with irritation.

Castiel blinked owlishly, trying to figure out what was going on there.

“You’re not Dean.”

“Yeah, no kidding, Captain Obvious.”

“My name is Castiel.”

“I don’t care. I’m trying to sleep here.”

That had to be the most surreal conversation he’d ever had with anyone. He was still trying to wrap his head around it when the window next to hers opened.

“Cas, what the hell?” Dean asked, while Sam also peered up next to him.

It was only then that it dawn on Castiel what was going on there.

“Oh. Sorry. I forgot.”

“He yours, tough guy?” the girl asked.

Dean didn’t bother to answer. He simply climbed up the window and held unto the ledge, feet dangling in the air as he calculated the best angle to jump. Castiel still felt a little apprehensive whenever he did that.

“You’re going out?” Sam asked, looking very disappointed.

“Don’t worry about it, Sammy. I’ll be back in a couple of hours,” Dean assured him. He then let go and landed on the ground with utter grace. He straightened up and looked at the girl’s window: “And you better not say anything.”

“I wouldn’t if I cared,” she replied. She slammed the window shut and the light disappeared.

Dean ignored her and walked up to Cas.

“Bad day?”

This was one thing Castiel would always cherish about his friendship with Dean: that he could understand what was going on without him saying a word. He just lowered his eyes and Dean patted him in the back.

“Yeah, me too. Let’s get out of here.”

Castiel still looked over the shoulder as they sneaked out of the backyard. Sam was still looking at them sadly from his window. The other remained stubbornly dark.

They went to their favorite spot, a fallen tree near the creek. They had discovered it when they were kids and they used it to stash all sort of treasures there. Dean took out a six pack he had stolen from his dad and cracked open one. Castiel never drank with him. He refused because he had seen what alcohol did to his father and he refused to ever go down the same path.

“She’s a piece of work, I tell you,” Dean said of his future step-sister, which Castiel had learned by now was called Meg. “She’s always snickering or huffing or rolling her eyes. She struts around like she’s a princess of something.”

“Is she going to our school?”

“Yeah. But don’t worry about it, Cas.” Dean squashed the empty can of beer against the tree’s bark and immediately opened another. “I doubt she has any interest in hanging with us.”

“Oh,” Castiel muttered.

He watched the creek’s water running, dark blue and sometimes silver from the moonlight. There was something about Meg’s face, about her voice, that he just couldn’t shake off, much as he tried.

He had no way of knowing that face would haunt him for years afterwards.

 

* * *

 

The wedding picture takes up most of the afternoon. Castiel wants to use as much natural light as he can while it’s possible. Dean and Benny patiently pose for him, leaning on a tree, looking at each other, laughing as they sit on the ground and hold hands on the grass. Castiel didn’t think Dean would go along with such “sappy poses”, but apparently, Benny likes them and Dean wants to humor his husband-to-be. His friend apparently won’t stop surprising him that day.

As the sun falls in the horizon, Castiel’s stomach is grumbling with hunger and he’s taken enough picture to fill two wedding albums. Good thing two, because another car parks in the driveway and more people arrive. Castiel recognizes them as Bobby Singer, Dean’s godfather, and he’s promptly introduced to his wife Ellen, her daughter Jo and Jo’s girlfriend, Charlie.

“Can we see, can we see?” Charlie asks, almost jumping up and down. She’s a redhead with a pixie haircut and she has the energy for it.

“Charlie, leave the poor man alone,” Jo laughs. But she also smiles at Castiel. “But seriously, can we see?”

Castiel agrees to let them take a look at his pictures while Dean and Benny change out of their formal suits. Mary makes more lemonade for everybody and insists that Bobby and Ellen should absolutely stay for dinner.

“That’s mighty generous, but aren’t we going to be crowding up the place?” Bobby asks.

“Actually, the kids are going out for drinks,” Mary says, even though “the kids” are all in their late twenties and early thirties. “Isn’t that right, Dean?” she asks without even looking over her shoulder.

Dean stops in his tracks on the stairs and winces.

“It’s freaky when you do that,” he tells her. “Yeah, we’re having some beers. You coming, girls?”

Charlie and Jo agree enthusiastically and Sam gets from where he’s sitting in the couch to join the part as well. Castiel looks at the hour again. He supposed his parents will be waiting for him for dinner and his mother is already probably angry at him for skipping lunch. Then again, he’s hungry enough that he might not even care…

“How about you, Clarence?” Meg’s voice comes floating towards him.

Castiel looks up at her and once more, he’s completely taking aback by her. She’s still as beautiful as the day they met, her brown eyes just as sweet and her smirk just as cheeky. It takes him a second to string together a coherent sentence.

“Are you… going as well?” he asks, clumsily.

“Of course. Sounds like a blast.”

It’s easier to decide after that. It might be a terrible reason to go out, but he can’t help it. She still bewitches him with worrying ease.

And besides, he’s curious. Meg has been a question mark in his life since they last saw each other. He wants to know where she’s been, what she’s done. He knows from talking to Sam and Dean that she’s a doctor now, but not much more. He needs to find out if she wonders about him the way he still does about her.

So he texts Hannah that they shouldn’t wait for him for dinner and immediately turns off the phone. He doesn’t want to deal with the guilt-tripping messages and calls.

“Talking to your girl there?” Meg asks. She doesn’t need to turn her face, she can watch him perfectly fine from the rearview mirror.

“No.” Castiel slides his phone in his pocket and looks up at her. “I don’t have a girl.”

“Really? Handsome fella like you comes to his friend’s wedding without a plus one?”

“I did bring a plus one,” Castiel protests. “My sister Hannah is assisting with me.”

“That’s not a plus one,” Meg laughs. “That’s a pity date.”

Sam chuckles and Castiel realizes Meg has subtly find out he has no girlfriend, but he still doesn’t know what her relationship status is. They parked in front of a diner Castiel has never seen before. The sign in front reads “Guidry’s Shack” and the inside is illuminated and cheerful, not like the cop bars full of smoke and rowdy men playing pool that Dean has dragged him to in the past. A woman with a Southern drawl comes to the door to hug Benny as soon as the group walks in.

“Why are you here? Aren’t you supposed to be getting ready for the big day?” she asks.

“I am. Gotta keep the guests entertained,” Benny says, waving at his fiancé and friends. “You think you can manage a table big enough for all of us, Liz?”

“Fine,” Liz says, putting her hand on her hip. “But you don’t get no employee discount.”

“How about future groom’s discount?”

“That can be arranged!”

Several patrons greet Benny and congratulate him as the seven of them squeeze into a boot. Castiel ends between Meg and Charlie and Jo, because Charlie is sitting on her girlfriend’s lap to make more space. Castiel supposes that is a good idea, considering Dean, Benny and Sam take up most of the rest of the space.

Dean and Benny start telling again the story of how they met for Charlie and Jo’s benefit and this time, Castiel tries not to get distracted by Meg’s leg grazing his and pays attention to it: a purse-snatcher slid into that very same diner with Dean on his tail and threatened one of the waitresses with a knife. Dean attempted to deescalate the situation (“Shooting in a diner full of people isn’t the brightest idea”), but before he could do much, Benny came from the kitchen swinging a frying pan and hit the thief in the back of the head with enough force to knock him out.

“Officer Winchester here wanted to personally thank me for my help and asked me out on a date,” Benny concludes.

“It wasn’t a date, I just wanted to have a drink with you because I thought you were interesting and brave… okay, yeah, it was a date,” Dean ends up admitting to the hilarity of everyone on the table. His ears are pink as he tells them to shut up and awkwardly takes a sip from his beer. So he’s still embarrassed by the discussion of anything related to feelings. Castiel is glad to know that at least that hasn’t changed.

“It’s the sixth time I’ve heard that story since I got here,” Meg groans, low enough that only Castiel can hear it. “I arrived this fucking morning.”

“It’s a pretty cute story.”

“I guess. If you’re into the whole cheesy, romantic meet cutes.” Meg rolls her eyes and Castiel can’t bite back his smile. That also hasn’t changed. Meg always hated corniness and big romantic gestures. He had learned that by falling on his face several times before he gathered the courage to ask her out.

Liz brings out the burgers and most of the conversation delves into wedding related stuff: what the food is going to be like (Benny, as a cook, would accept nothing but the best), the venue, who will be officiating (Pastor Jim didn’t even have to be asked twice, bless him) and who else is supposed to come. Dean’s face grows somber when he comments that his dad hasn’t arrived yet.

“I mean, it’s not like I was expecting him to come after… well…”

“Cher,” Benny says, putting his hand on Dean’s arm. “Don’t think about that.”

Dean forces out a smile.

“Yeah, you’re right. Who wants another beer?”

“I’ll go get them. Been sitting on my ass for too long anyway,” Meg says. She squiggles out of the booth and strides away towards the bar. Castiel watches her go for a second before he realizes everyone else has gone quiet.

“What?” he asks his friends, a little taken aback.

“Go after her,” Sam urges him.

“I… I don’t…”

“Dude, you’ve been staring at her all night,” Dean points out. “Just go.”

Castiel doesn’t really need any further encouragement. He takes a couple of deep breaths as he stalks towards Meg. If it was obvious for Sam and Dean, Meg surely must have noticed as well. What would she think of that? Would she want to talk to him? It was so many years ago, they were just kids… she probably doesn’t even…

Meg turns her head towards when she hears him approach and smirks at him. Once again, Castiel’s thoughts end up completely scattered on the floor, but he manages to stand near her without knocking something or bumping into another patron. He counts that as a victory.

“Hello,” he says, awkwardly.

“That’s your best opening line?” Meg asks.

“I’m sorry. Had I known I needed an opening line, I would have rehearsed one.”

Meg’s laughter sends a shiver down his spine.

“Never change, Clarence.” She shifts position to face him and lifts her face at him. “How’s life treated since I last saw you?”

“It was… good,” Castiel says and he begins to ramble, as he always does when he’s nervous: “I have a studio now, in the Bay Area. We do some shootings for clothes designers and advertisement…”

“Ah, so you must meet a lot of supermodels,” Meg teases.

“No, not really. I mean, I guess I do, but it’s… strictly professional,” he says. He can feel his stomach turning at the sheer stupidity of what he’s trying to say, so he clears his throat and changes topic: “I… I heard about your dad. I’m sorry.”

That was probably a mood killer and he should have tried a smoother topic, but Meg doesn’t hold it against him. Her smile disappears and she looks down for a moment, but then she looks up again.

“Yeah, it was… I’m not gonna say it was unexpected, because it never really is with cancer.” Meg shrugs. “How about your family? How are they?”

“They’re… doing fine.” Castiel cringes. He tries to find something interesting to say about them and this is when he regrets his lack of communication with them. “Hael is graduating this year from college…”

“No way!” Meg’s eyebrows shoot up in shock. “Really? To think that when I met her she was yay high and you had to take her trick-or-treating.”

Castiel beams, but he can’t help but to think of how much time has passed since then. What is he doing? They’re not the same people they used to be and it’s silly to expect that there’s something left, after all those years…

Liz puts the beers down in front of them and Meg grabs some. She looks at him until he realizes that he’s supposed to do the same and picks up the rest of them. He goes back to the table with the disappointing feeling he had a golden opportunity to find more about Meg and he threw it away.

In the meantime, the sitting arrangement have changed: Charlie is no longer using her girlfriend as a chair and he has the impression both Sam and Dean are spreading their legs unnecessarily. Benny shrugs and tells them to drag another table close. It’s getting late and the diner is emptying fast, so he doesn’t think Liz will have a problem with it, as long as they leave enough space between it and the booth so people can come through. Castiel suspects it’s a ploy to give Meg and him a little more privacy and he’s silently thankful for it.

Meg tells him about her life: she never wanted to go to college (Castiel knows this) but she was inspired to do so when her father initially got sick. She became a surgeon and she works long, tiring hours in the hospital, but she talks with pride she can’t hide about her job, even though she hates her boss. Castiel listens with fascination. Meg used to be a selfish, wild child, always looking for the next thrill, but underneath it, he knew she was an extremely loyal and kind person. That aspect of her has come to the forefront with the years, even though she hasn’t lost her spunk at all.

It’s been hours before he realizes that they’ve drunk enough beer that he’s caught a pleasant light buzz and Meg is laughing a lot more than she usually would. Liz kicks the last patrons out and side-eyes them, but doesn’t rush them to get out. However, Dean takes out his wallet and insists to pay for everyone (he might be a little drunker than the rest of them). Meg puts some bills on the table and staggers a little when she gets up. Castiel hurries to her side and catches her by the elbow to help her keep her balance.

“Such a gentleman,” Meg comments, shaking her head.

“We’re a dying breed,” Castiel replies, with a smile. They walked towards the door, barely noticing their friends aren’t getting up just yet, discussing pretty loudly how the bill should be divided and completely forgetting they have calculators in their phones.

“You don’t have to tell me about it,” Meg says, shaking her head a little. “I thought I was dating one until three weeks ago. Turned out to be just a run of the mill douchebag.”

Castiel’s ears perked up. This is what he has been trying to find out all night without any idea of how to bring up the topic. He opens the door for her and says nothing, worried that asking will make Meg clam up. The step out the warm spring night and Meg raises her head, breathing in to clear her head.

“I caught him making out with a nurse called Ruby in the supply room,” Meg tells him. She laughs, but it sounds odd, like she’s trying to find humor in a situation that has none for her. “And then when we were fighting about it, he said ‘I’m sorry about Lilith’. I asked ‘Who the fuck is Lilith?’. Turned out it was his Tinder girlfriend.”

“Wow.”

“Yep. I had blood tests done afterwards,” Meg tells him. She turns around, so now she’s standing directly in front of him, still smiling. “Luckily, I didn’t catch anything.”

Castiel isn’t sure if she means that as a joke or if he’s supposed to take something out of it. She steps closer to him, so close he can smell her perfume.

“You’ve been pretty much the exception to every other guy I’ve met,” Meg comments. “You were always so sweet on me.”

Castiel swallows loudly. This isn’t the direction he expected the night to go at all.

“Meg…” he mutters, but she shuts up him by standing on her toes and putting a hand behind his neck.

 

* * *

 

They kissed for the very first time over the fallen tree by the creek, almost a year after he mistakenly threw pebbles at her window. It was a summer day, hot and sunny, but to Castiel it looked even brighter when Meg moved closer to him, grabbed him by the shirt and crashed her mouth into his. It was clumsy and unexpected and he forgot to close his eyes.

It’s still the best kiss he’s ever received.

 

* * *

 

Castiel doesn’t fight it when she pulls him down. The warmth of her lips makes his stomach flip and once more, he doesn’t think his legs will be able to hold him. He instinctively puts a hand on her hip, but he doesn’t dare to do much more until she breaks it off. She frowns a little, as if she’s wondering the reason for hi lack of reaction.

“You’re drunk,” he points out.

“Yes. Not enough to not know what I’m doing, though.”

“Oh. Well, in that case…”

He must be drunk too, because if he was sober he would have spent at least another minute wondering and hesitating. Instead, he grabs her by the waist and spins around with her. The diner’s wall underneath the dim streetlight isn’t the most romantic setting for this kind of reunion, but he forgets soon enough about it. He kisses her, open mouthed and passionate and she responds in kind, her hand tightening on his shoulder while the other remains insistent in the back of his neck, her nails scraping his scalp. He tangles his fingers in her hair and gets lost in the sensation. His heart’s racing and his head’s dizzy because he only remembers to breathe in the brief moments they break away before they join their lips again.

It’s not exactly like the kiss on the fallen tree. It’s not entirely different either.

Someone clears their throat loudly and Castiel steps back, flushed and embarrassed. Meg is still holding on to his coat and throws an irritated glance at Sam.

“Hey, short stuff, can’t you tell we’re a little busy?”

“Yeah, I can see that,” Sam says. He comments nothing, but takes his car keys out of his pocket and throws them at Meg. She almost drops them, but at the last second, she manages to hold on to them. “Can you take my car back to the house? I’m riding with the rest because they’re all too hammered to drive.”

“Are you seriously trusting us with this?” Meg asks, crooking an eyebrow.

Sam sighs and shrugs.

“Just… don’t do anything in the backseat,” he says before turning his back on him and going back inside.

Castiel realizes he still has a hand on Meg’s neck and quickly steps back.

“I… uh…” he stutters

“Can you drive? You drank less than I did.”

“Yes, I think so. But Meg…”

Meg pays no mind to his protests. She grabs his hand and practically drags him towards Sam’s car. Once they’re inside, she grins at him.

“My place or yours?”


	3. Chapter 3

There’s a lot of giggling and stumbling as they sneak into Castiel’s house.

“Meg, please,” he tries to shush her. “My parents are going to hear us.”

“Brings back the memories, huh?”

Castiel covers his mouth with his hand, trying to stifle his own laughter as he guides her upstairs. Once in the hallway, he stops and pushes her against the wall again. Meg doesn’t know where all this confidence came from, but she sure is thankful for it as he kisses her one more time before he asks:

“Are you sure?”

“I came all this way, didn’t I?” Meg replies and grabs his hand once more. She’s trying to remember which one was his room, but she can’t really, not with her mind racing as it is.

She doesn’t know why she kissed him in the first place. It was one of those things she did without thinking, knowing full well that Castiel could have pushed her away, told her he had no interest at all in hooking up with an old high school girlfriend. This has the potential to be anywhere from a disaster to a very awkward morning after.

And she can’t bring herself to really care.

Honestly, she blames Dean and Benny. Having to spend a full day in the same house as those two has definitely messed with her head. Before she arrived to Lawrence, she was still bitter and angry and convinced that love was a lie and not worth the heartbreak. But seeing the two grooms being all lovey-dovey with each other had done two things: first it had made her puke in her mouth a little bit. And then it got her thinking that perhaps love is rare, but not impossible to come by. If Dean, of all people, could find it, then perhaps…

And to top it all off, Castiel’s presence, his blue eyes, his rough voice, had unbalanced her. It was as if there was a full host of memories that she had been keeping carefully hidden, but his mere appearance had been enough to open the floodgates. Things she never allows herself to think about suddenly are in the forefront of her mind and the way he kept looking at her, like she mesmerizes him, wasn’t really helpful. No one ever has ever looked at her like that before or after Castiel.

So maybe she is making a mistake. Maybe her ego is still bruised from her break-up with Luc and she’s jealous of Dean and Benny and trying to make herself feel better. But then again…

She stops to think when Castiel closes the door of his room behind them. She’ll have plenty of time to regret it later and blame it on the alcohol.

She kicks her shoes off, sits on his bed and stops to look around. The room hasn’t changed much either: the posters that hanged from the closet’s door have disappeared, and the desk has been pushed to the side to make room for a bigger bed, but other than that, it remains almost the same. Its most prominent feature is still a big library with shelves overflowing with books that occupies and entire wall and Meg wonders if Castiel’s old sketchbook are still there.

The mattress sinks by her side when he sits and she turns to look at him.

“I…” Castiel starts but Meg doesn’t give him to finish just as she doesn’t give herself time to doubt.

She puts her hand in his cheeks and kisses him again, enjoying the way her skin comes alight when their tongues touch, when he slides a hand up her blouse and his fingertips ghost up very slowly. She breaks the kiss and Castiel looks at her disconcerted until she pulls the blouse off and throws it aside before she reaches for the buttons of his shirt.

Castiel does her one better: he grabs her by the hips and pulls both of them down on the bed, rolling over until he's on top of her and lowering his mouth to her neck. Meg lets out a soft moan and opens her eyes to really take in how much his body has changed in the dim light of his night lamp.

When she met Castiel, he was a thin boy who always stood a little hunched, his eyes downcast and sheepish. He's overcome that now: he stands tall and with his head held high and he looks at people in the eye while he talks to them with the confidence of a man who knows his place in the world. And he's definitely not thin anymore, no, sir.

Meg slides her hand down the hard muscles of his back and squeezes his bicep. He's muscular and strong, but not bulgy. She can't help the satisfied humming that escapes her lips. Castiel stops kissing her shoulders to look up at her with a confused frown.

"Got in shape, did you, Clarence?" she asks.

"I... took up running," he explains. "And yoga."

"Well, Namaste," Meg chuckles. "You look fine."

She was always a happy drunk, but she doesn't know exactly what's making her laugh now: that her high school sweetheart became a smoking hot man or the idea of Castiel in yoga pants.

Whatever it is, it must be funny for Castiel too, because he laughs as well and reaches for her bra's clasp.

"Thank you. You're not so bad yourself."

"Shut up." Meg shakes her head.

She's never been a supermodel like the ones he sees in his job, she knows this. In her teenage years, her small breasts were mortifying to her but eventually she came to terms with them. Now she's trying to accept that her hips and thighs, the same ones that Castiel is grabbing right now to pull her jeans and panties down, have grown a wider since she no longer has time to go to the gym. Luc has made comments about it in the past, but it's hard to remember which ones they were when she's now lying naked in Castiel's bed and he's looking down at her with hunger in his blue eyes and his lips half-open.

"You're beautiful," he breathes out.

Meg kisses him to shut him up. She's not sure she can handle him looking at her that way, not right now when she doesn't want to think about what she's doing. She moves her hand down and feels his growing erection through his slacks.

And that's when a semblance of rational thought pierces through the cloud in her mind.

"Cas... wait, do you have... protection?" she asks, pathetically, because suddenly her tongue is a jumble and she can't find the right word for it.

Castiel narrows his eyes at her, clearly not understanding what she means.

"Protection?" he repeats, and the realization dawns on him practically as the word rolls out of his tongue: "Oh, you mean..."

“I’m on the pill, but I’d like to make double sure we’re not screwing up.”

And she laughs again, because screwing is exactly what they’re doing and it’s funny.

But Castiel’s cheeks had gone deep red and he’s avoiding her eyes, embarrassed.

“I don’t… I’m sorry.”

“Okay, I should have some on my purse…” Meg sits up and looks around, but her purse is nowhere to be seen in the mess of clothes scattered on the floor. Now that she thinks about it, she didn’t have it when they walked in, so where…? “My purse that I left in the car,” she remembers and leans back on the pillow.

Castiel mutters a disgruntled “Oh” again and falls back down next to her. They stay silent and unsatisfied for a moment.

“Well, maybe we can…” Castiel begins to suggest.

“No balloons, no party,” Meg interrupts him. “We’re supposed to be responsible adults, Cas.”

It’s Castiel’s turn to laugh, though Meg isn’t sure what’s so funny.

“That’s not what I was about to suggest,” he says.

Meg throws him an interrogating glance, but she doesn’t really try to push him away when he leans over and begins kissing her neck once more, lapping and biting softly. He slides a hand between her legs and Meg’s breath hitches up. Why is he doing this to her when he knows they can’t…?

But Castiel seems to be full of surprises that night. He leaves a trail of kisses down her neck, over her breasts and down her stomach. He stops with his mouth hovering over her bellybutton and looks up.

“Is this… is this alright?”

Meg has to breathe in a couple of times before finding her voice.

“Go ahead.”

Castiel doesn’t have to be told twice: he gently pushes her legs apart and gets to work. He starts slow: kitten licks and laps on the inside of her thighs right before he moves down to her cunt. Meg arches her back up, biting her lips. Whoever it was that taught him to eat out, she thinks she needs to send her a thank you card. Castiel curls his tongue around her clit, sending waves of pleasure up her spine, his fingers grabbing unto her ass a little on the rougher side. When slides a finger inside of her, Meg moans out loud.

“Meg, please,” he begs, lifting his head up. “My parents…”

Meg takes in the sight of him with his lips glistening with her juices and she really can’t find it in herself to give a fuck if the entire world can hear her. She grabs him by the hair and pushes his face down. Apparently, he takes this as a challenge, because he adds another finger and his tongue picks up a rhythm, growing faster every time Meg makes a sound or moves. She’s practically grinding on his face, holding unto the covers with one hand and sinking her nails in his scalp with the other, when her orgasm hits her, intense and slow. She lets out a scream that Castiel shushes by kissing her, forceful and sudden. Meg tastes herself in his mouth and oh, God, she would come again right there if she hadn’t finished a moment before.

Instead, she moves her hand down and finds her way into his boxers. Castiel is rock hard and it only takes a few careful strokes to get him to finish. He hides his face in her neck to muffle a cry. Meg laughs and lifts up her hand, stained with his cum.

“I’ll… I’ll bring you a towel…” Castiel mutters, but his words die in his throat and his eyes grew wider when Meg licks and sucks her fingers. She knows exactly what she’s doing and she grins at him.

“What? You got to taste me. It’s only fair.”

“Oh, God, I missed you,” he mutters.

She laughs again as lunges over her and covers her face with kisses.

 

* * *

 

Castiel likes to cuddle. He always has. One night in the middle of February, he climbed the newly installed gutter and sneaked in Meg’s room through the window. They snuggled together underneath the covers with the excuse of fighting off the cold. They hadn’t done anything except kissing and some heavy petting before and that night wasn’t different. Sex was still a bit of a mystery for both of them, a line they weren’t ready to cross, much as Meg liked to pretend she knew all about it from reading magazines and talking to her friends.

“It should be special,” Castiel insisted whenever she brought the topic. “I mean, I’ve never… have you?”

“I’ve… done some stuff with my ex-boyfriend,” Meg confessed, trying to sound confident despite feeling the way her cheeks were burning. “But I’ve never… you know, gone all the way.”

Castiel almost looked sad when he admitted in a whisper:

“I’ve never had a girlfriend before.”

“Really?” Meg asked, raising an eyebrow. “Why not?”

Castiel stayed quiet for a really long time, as if that question required some serious consideration.

“I’ve never liked anyone as much as you.”

That was one thing she always liked about him: there was an earnestness to his words, like he knew every one of them counted, that they had a weight to them that he needed to consider before he let them out of his tongue. Meg, who often came out snarkier and meaner than she intended, had grown to respect that about him.

“You’re a sap,” she accused him before kissing him one more time and settling in between his arms. Castiel held her close and toyed with her hair until her eyes began fluttering. She fell asleep while staring into the bright blue of his eyes and dreamed about the ocean that night.

 

* * *

 

She can’t remember what she dreamed about when she wakes up curled up against Castiel’s chest, sixteen years and what seems like an entire life later. She has a mild headache pulsing in her temples and her mouth is dry. Castiel has an arm around her waist and snores softly in her ear. A gentle sunlight pours in through the window’s pane and the house is silent in the early morning hour.

Meg thinks about going back to sleep. Let this false sense of peace and calmness lull her back into unconsciousness before she remembers everything she’s supposed to be doing. Or better yet, roll over in bed and kiss the stubble growing in Castiel’s cheek. Maybe even slip under the covers and wake him with a blowjob. She owes him, after all.

But her mind catches up to last night’s events and suddenly Castiel’s arm weighs a ton over her. Why the hell did she do that? He’s probably going to get some sort of romantic idea about this being more than just a one night stand and it’s going to be awkward as all hell when she goes back home and they resume their lives. Holy shit, she did not think this through.

Moving as delicately as she can, she pushes Castiel’s arm away from her waist and inches towards the bed’s edge until she can sit up. She eyes Castiel and cringes to herself. Goddammit, it wasn’t the alcohol. He really is that good looking and his body really has all that muscles. And he gives great head. She needs to get out of there before she is the one who starts to get ideas. She picks up her clothes from the floor and dresses as fast and silently as she can. She doesn’t bother with her shoes, she picks them up in one hand and tiptoes towards the door.

Castiel snores louder and Meg freezes before looking over her shoulder. But he doesn’t wake up, he just rolls over his stomach and hugs the pillow. Meg supposes she should feel offended he can replace her so easily, but her heart thrums in her chest and she finds herself beaming at how peaceful he looks.

No, no, no. She needs to get the hell out, right now.

She slips down the stairs as fast as she can. She really hope Castiel left Sam’s keys in the car, because she’s not going back to look for them. She’d do the walk of shame all the way back to the Winchesters rather than going back into the room to risk seeing Castiel awake and wondering why she left without saying goodbye.

Finally, she reaches the last step and breathes a sigh of relief. Now all she has to do is get back in the car and…

“Uh… hello?” a voice calls from the kitchen.

Meg halts once more and slowly turns towards the voice, coming from the table at her left. A short man with a bear wearing a striped robe is in the table. He has a steaming cup of coffee hanging halfway towards his mouth and he blinks at her with confusion on his blue eyes.

“Oh… Mr. Shurley,” Meg mutters. “Uh… good morning.”

Mr. Shurley continues looking at her, with lips half-open, as if he can’t quite figure out who she is and why the hell she’s there. Meg can hardly blame him.

“I was… just… taking my leave,” she says, clumsily.

“Oh. Okay.” Mr. Shurley shakes his head and finally he recovers some semblance of courtesy. “Aren’t you going to stay for breakfast? I mean, I didn’t know Castiel had a guest over, but… maybe stay for some coffee?”

It’s obvious he doesn’t remember who she is. Meg smiles awkwardly.

“That’s… that’s fine. I really have to go,” she says. “But thank you.”

She resists the urge to break into a sprint towards the door. She hears a half-hearted “You’re welcome” right before she closes it behind her and goes for the car.

The doors are open (thank God for small, safe neighborhoods) and she finds the keys in the glove compartment, along with her purse underneath the passenger seat. Just as she is taking it out, she hears a ringing inside and cringes when she sees Sam’s face flash in her screen.

“Where are you?” he asks, even before she gets to say a word.

“Halfway to Nevada. I decided to kidnap the photographer and force him to marry me in Vegas.”

Sam doesn’t find it funny.

“Could you just… get here?” he requests. “We were supposed to be at the wedding rehearsal fifteen minutes ago and Dean is freaking out.”

Meg resists the urge to ask why the fuck don’t they take Dean’s car then and assures him she’ll be there in ten minutes. She stops by a pharmacy for some aspirins and a coffee shop for some breakfast and makes it in twenty five, because maybe by then Dean and Sam would’ve left and she wouldn’t have to talk to either of them.

She’s out of luck. The second she crosses the doorway, Dean is all up in her face, his green eyes glimmering with fury.

“Where the hell were you?”

“Relax, I’m here,” Meg says walking around him to present Sam with his keys. “And your car remains free of suspicious stains.”

“Thanks, I guess,” Sam says, wrinkling his nose.

Dean isn’t going to just let up, though.

“You really have no respect for anything, do you?” he keeps on going. “We called you like fifteen times! We were going to leave for the rehearsal at ten…!”

“Well, if you keep ranting, you’re never going to make it,” Meg replies, sitting down on the couch and calmly sipping from her cup. “Off you go, then.”

Dean doesn’t move. He remains rooted to his spot on the carpet, still glaring at her as if Meg had kicked his dog. She turns to Sam for an explanation and he sighs. Usually, whenever she and Dean fought, he would stay out of it, but this time he sighs and steps up to Meg.

“You’re supposed to be there too,” he points out.

Meg is about to ask him what the hell he’s supposed to be talking about when it hits her: she’s part of the wedding party. She’s not a maid of honor, per se, but she’s one of the people that’s going to be standing around while Dean and Benny say their vows. Dean isn’t angry because she was late to return Sam’s car, he’s angry because she was the one who was late.

“Oh,” she mutters. Now she feels slightly guilty, but more than that, she’s irritated at Dean for making her feel that way. “Well, sorry. If you wanted someone who was always on time…”

“I chose you because my mother insisted!” Dean almost screams at him. “‘Oh, she’s Az’s daughter, I know you never got along, but we always wanted you to be family’. I told her you were an utter bitch and that you were going to ruin this for me…”

“Hey!” Meg interrupts him standing up. “I didn’t ask for this anymore than you did, tough guy, so you can take whatever opinion you have of me and shove it up your…”

“And you slept with my photographer!” Dean keeps pointing out. “Because you did, didn’t you?”

“I fail to see how that is any of your business!” Meg tries to keep her composure, but she crosses her arms over her chest defensively and feels the blood rushing towards her face. She refuses to be embarrassed. She refuses to care about Dean’s opinion of her.

“It’s any of my business because it’s going to be awkward as all fuck and…!”

“Please! Cas is a professional! And just because you’re a fucking control freak…!”

“Well, he’s also my friend!” Dean argues. “And I happen to know he doesn’t do one night stands, so I really hope that you made it clear to him you’re gonna fuck off after the weekend and never see him again!”

Meg is disarmed. She hates it when Dean gets all up in her business, but even more so, she hates it when he’s right about something.

“I’ll talk to him,” she huffs. “And I’m sure it’s not going to be a problem, because we’re all fucking adults and not stupid teenagers with crushes we can’t admit.”

Dean growls and shakes his head, but he’s obviously as disarmed as she was a second before. Meg feels a little immature having to resort to dragging old skeletons out of their closet, but if it’s the only way to get Dean to shut up…

“Awesome, great.” Sam stands up from the armchair where he sat to patiently wait for them to be done bickering and waves his cellphone. “Can we get going? Because Mom, Benny and Pastor Jim are waiting for us.”

Meg and Dean glared at each other a little more, but they both nod.

The ride to the church is awkwardly silent. Dean slams the door when he gets out but he puts on a smile upon seeing his fiancé waiting for him at the door’s church. He walks up to him and kisses him on the cheek before putting an arm around his shoulder and leading him inside. Pastor Jim waits for Meg and Sam to greet them as well.

“Megan Masters,” the old priests says, smiling at her with that ever-peaceful expression that irritates her to no end. “It’s been years.”

“Yes, father. Since my dad’s funeral, I think.”

“You told me to stick my prayers up my behind,” Pastor Jim reminds her. He’s paraphrasing, of course.

Meg tries to find some sense of shame in her, but fails. Her father always hated the church and everything that had to do with it. She’s sure that had she let Pastor Jim pray over Azazel’s body, he would’ve woken up to strangle him.

“But I understand,” the pastor continues as if Meg had shown any signs of remorse. “We’re only human and we can let our emotions overwhelm us in times of great stress. Have you become closer to God since?”

“Well, you know, I would.” Meg shrugs. “But we have a kind of awkward relationship because he keeps taking the credit for my job every time I save a life.”

“Thank you, father, we’ll go to our seats,” Sam says, grabbing Meg by the arm and dragging her inside. “Could you please not sass the priest?”

“I promise nothing,” Meg replies through her teeth. “Most I can do is stand here and try not to burst into flames.”

Sam doesn’t appreciate her attempt at humor. He clenches his jaw and guides towards the altar so the rehearsal can begin.

The morning drags and by the time Meg’s heard Benny and Dean repeat their vows three times, she’s hungry and annoyed and wants to take a nap and a shower before that night’s dinner. Finally, she’s allowed to take a break and goes outside for a little bit to clear her head.

The church’s yard remains the same. She sits on the stone bench under the watchful eyes of a grey angel. This isn’t the first time she’s been stuck there while a wedding is being planned on the inside.

 

* * *

 

Her situation on December of the first years she moved there wasn’t much better than in September. She had started going to school, but she staunchly refused to socialize with anybody. Back in California she’d had a group of close-knit friends and a boyfriend. Here, she was known as Dean Winchester’s asshole step-sister and no one was much interested in making friends with her.

She tried to pretend the lack of social life wasn’t getting to her, but if she’d had someone to hang out with that Saturday afternoon, she would’ve had an excuse not to come along to the church with her dad and Mary and wait for them in the frost-covered front yard. Some booking thing they needed to get done or something. Meg wondered why the hell it mattered to her dad if they got married by church and why he couldn’t tell that to Mary. If they’re entire relationship was going to be him keeling over to her demands, she could start packing for the inevitable return to California already.

Not that she wanted them to break up. Not that she had joined the Mary Winchester fan club all of the sudden, but she didn’t want her dad to be sad. It was just… why couldn’t he wait until it wouldn’t affect her that he got married?

She was dealing with all of those conflicting emotions the only way she knew how: by rebelling and being a little shit. That day’s form of rebellion was smoking. She had dabbled at the parties she had been invited to back home, but she had never developed the habit. Now, she almost wanted her dad to smell the smoke in her clothes. She wanted him to take his eyes off his fiancée for five minutes and yell at her. Anything.

She had only taken one drag of the cigarette when a shy voice spoke next to her:

“My teacher says smoking is bad.”

Meg turned to her left to see a little girl, younger even than Sam. While, at least she thought it was a little girl. It was hard to tell with the thick coat and the scarf around her face. The only thing Meg could really see were a pair of enormous blue eyes and a little tuft of black hair poking from her hat with a pink pompom.

“Teachers don’t know everything,” Meg told her, arrogantly.

The little girl tilted her head as if she was considering that, but then she shook her head.

“Teachers know many things,” she said. “That’s why they’re teachers.”

“Aren’t you an intelligent little nugget?” Meg replied, rolling her eyes.

“Hael!”

Castiel came almost skidding down the path with a stack of flyers in one hand and grabbed the little girl with the other. At that point in her life, Meg knew him only as Dean’s weirdly quiet friend. He was always hanging around the house or at school with him. Meg would have ignored him, like she ignored everything else that irritated her about this town, but she had noticed that every time she even so much glance at him, he seemed to be staring in her direction. And he knew he was doing it, too, because he would startled and quickly look away whenever she caught him.

This time, however, he didn’t even register Meg.

“Don’t go running like that,” he chastised her. “You could have slipped.”

“She called me a nugget,” Hael said, pointing at Meg.

Meg remained exactly where she was and even took another drag as Castiel finally turned to look at her. She noticed his eyes growing wide and the way he almost step back, as if being close to her gave him some sort of electric shock. It was hard to tell because was already red from the physical effort he’d made to keep up with Hael, but Meg had the impression his cheeks had become redder.

So weird quiet guy had a crush on her. Meg almost burst into laughter. That was precious. And also, maybe, a source of entertainment for her. God knew they were scarce around there.

“Hello, Castiel,” she greeted him, with her biggest smile.

“Uh… hi… Meg,” he stuttered, avoiding her eye.

“Is she your friend?” Hael asked.

“Yes, actually. We’re besties.” Meg chuckled and tapped her cigarette to let the ashes fall on the pristine ground. That, at least, got him to turn his attention to her.

“You shouldn’t be smoking.”

“And you shouldn’t be outside of church on a Saturday,” Meg shot back.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s depressing. Makes you look like a loser with no friends.”

“Well, if that’s the case for me, what does it make you?” Castiel asked, squinting his eyes at her.

Meg had to admit he had a point, but the way he said it irritated her somewhat. She stood up and blew a puff of smoke directly in his face. He managed to remain stoic, though his eyes became a little watery.

“And what are you even carrying there?” Meg asked, snatching one of the flyers from his stack.

“It’s for the Christmas raffle,” Castiel explained.

“The first prize is a bike!” Hael exclaimed. Excitement made her voice shriller and louder than necessary.

“Does Pastor Jim pay you for handing out these?”

“No. I volunteered,” Castiel said. “I volunteer every year. It’s for a good cause. We gather funds for a homeless shelter.”

“And on Christmas, we go caroling to the hospital!” Hael added. “It’s really fun.”

“So you help the poor and the sick.” Meg snickered. “You’re real life Clarence, aren’t you?”

Castiel blinked at her again, disconcerted.

“I… don’t know who that is.”

“Right. You’re probably too busy doing good deeds on Christmas to catch a movie on cable.”

Castiel’s frown deepened and Meg had to admit, as far as insults go, that hadn’t one made much sense. But she had the satisfaction of getting the last word, because at that moment, the church’s door open and Mary and Azazel came out. Meg took the two seconds they stopped by to say their goodbyes to Pastor Jim to drop her cigarette and grind it with the sole of her boot. She glared at Castiel, but she didn’t have time to threaten him to keep his mouth shut before the lovebirds approached them.

“Hello, kids… has someone been smoking?” Mary asked, the second the scent of cigarette was within her sniffing range. Meg swore that woman was half hound.

But what happened next shocked her enough to keep her quiet. Castiel grabbed his little sister by the shoulder, held her close to him and very subtle put a hand right over her mouth at the same time he said:

“It was me, Mrs. Winchester. Meg was trying to tell me I should stop.”

"Castiel Shurley!" Mary exclaimed. "I'm surprised at you! And in front of your little sister, too!"

Said little sister was currently struggling to get off Castiel's grasp, but he was holding her close and still refusing to let her get a word in.

"I know. I'm sorry," he said, lowering his eyes. "Meg was telling me I should stop. Please, don't tell my mother."

Azazel turned to Meg, but she kept quiet for two reasons: she was too stunned for Castiel taking the blame for her and too smart to open her mouth and have it shift back to her again.

"I think we can let you go with a warning, boy," Azazel said in the end. He put a hand on Castiel's shoulder and bent a little so he could look him in the eye. "But we better not catch you doing anything like that again, am I clear."

"Yes, Mr. Master. Crystal clear."

"Well, then." Azazel smiled. "We should get going."

"I'll see you around, Castiel," Mary said. She ruffled Castiel's hair, almost as lovingly as she good with any of her sons. "Be smart."

"Yes, Mrs. Winchester. Thank you."

Meg didn't say goodbye. She just turned around and follow them back to the car without a word.

"He's normally such a good boy," Mary commented once they were rolling down the street, with Castiel and Hael in the rearview mirror. "He might be acting out due to all the tension in his house. Naomi won't say anything, but I get the feeling it's getting worse."

Azazel commented nothing on this, but Meg could feel the sting of his stare in the mirror.

"I think that boy has a good heart," he said after a pause. "Don't you, Meggie?"

It was at that moment that Meg was absolutely sure that her father knew that Castiel had lied for her, but he wasn't going to bring it up unless she did. Meg decided to take the out and not say a single word about it.

"Or not enough brains," she mumbled, turning her gaze towards the window.

 

* * *

 

Someone sits by her side and Meg startles. When she turns around, she only sees Benny, beaming at her with the say kindness as usual.

"Were you travelling far?" he asks.

"More like, going way back," she replies with a shrug.

"Yeah, I guess coming back home can do that to you." He nods. "Sometimes it's hard to look back, though. Wouldn't blame you if you preferred not to."

His niceness awakes something that all of Dean's yelling and nagging couldn't: a little bit of guilt for the way she acted that morning.

"Hey, sorry we were late. It was my fault," she admits. "I got a little... caught up with something."

"No need to apologize. The important thing is that you got here after all," Benny assures her. "I know that Dean doesn't have the highest opinion of you, but I think you're alright."

"Yeah?" Meg crooks an eyebrow. "How do you figure?"

"Well, at least you're here for us," Benny explains. "Unlike, you know..."

It's as if his words invoke him.

A motor roared down the street and a black, '67 Chevrolet Impala pulls up in front of the church. Meg recognizes it immediately. How could she not?

She also recognizes the man that climbs out of it. His beard has gone thicker, as if he hasn't had the presence of mind to shave it in many days, and his clothes are creased, as if he had been sleeping on them. But when he crosses the church's fence and walks directly towards them, he exudes confidence as if he's exactly where he wants to be.

"Hello," he calls out. "I'm looking for Dean Winchester?"

"Uh... he's inside," Benny says, standing up right away. He looks a little nervous and Meg is sure he must have recognized him from the pictures the Winchester still have at home. "Excuse me, are you...?"

"Dad!"

Dean comes almost running out of the church, but he halts suddenly. He hesitates, as if he doesn't know if he should hug or shake his father's hand. John Winchester decides for him. In a single stride, he closes the distance between them and holds his oldest son in a tight embrace.

"Hey, kid. Sorry I’m late. I got caught up in traffic."


	4. Chapter 4

Castiel isn't having the best of days.

When he stretches his hand to feel the other side of the bed that morning, he finds it empty, with the sheets crumpled up and tossed aside. There's no trace of Meg in his room when he finally opens his eyes. He's not surprise, but he can't help the bitter disappointment that settles in his stomach. She had to go to the wedding rehearsal earlier, he knew this, but why didn't she wake him up to say goodbye to him? Why did she leave without having at least of cup with him? It boggles his mind.

And to add insult to injure, his entire family is already up by the time he wakes up. He walks into the kitchen and whatever conversation they were having stops too abruptly for it to be about anything other than him.

"Good morning," he greets them as politely as he can. He moves to pour himself some coffee and tries not to think about the sudden awkward silence that fell over them.

Finally, his father is the first to speak:

"Good morning, Castiel. Did you sleep well?"

"I did, thank you," he replies. That isn't any better. This force courtesy, if anything, gets on his nerves even more, so Castiel decides to just face the issue head on. "Is something wrong?"

Naomi and Hannah glare at him as if they can't believe he's actually asking that, as if he's supposed to know what exactly is wrong. Chuck clears his throat.

"No, there's nothing wrong," he assures him, a little too cheerfully. "I was just telling your mom and your sister about your... overnight guest."

Castiel chokes on his coffee.

"How do you... I mean, what?" he stammers pathetically, but it's too late.

"Oh, don't try to deny it," Hannah groans. "I thought I heard something... odd last night, but I assumed you were watching a movie or something."

Castiel looks at her paralyzed and incapable of uttering a word. He can imagine perfectly the kind of thing Hannah heard, but he can't, for the life of him, imagine how did Hannah arrive to the conclusion he was watching that kind of movie at that volume and without earphones.

"You didn't tell us you had a girlfriend," Naomi accuses him.

"I don't... have a girlfriend," Castiel blurts out and immediately closes his eyes. He should have lied. Now his mother is going to assume the worse.

"Well, if she wasn't your girlfriend, who was she?" she demands to know.

"She... was my girlfriend." Castiel cringes. "Back in the day... when I was younger..."

"Oh!" Chuck snaps his fingers with enthusiasm, as if he's just figured out the solution to a difficult puzzle. "That's where I knew her from! She was the Masters girl!"

Castiel is surprised he remembers her at all. Of course, he brought Meg home one time to introduce her to his parents, because that is the thing you're supposed to do when you have an official girlfriend. It... it didn't end well. Hael let it slip that they had seen Meg smoking outside of the church months before and Naomi was scandalizes. It didn't seem to matter to her that her husband had started drinking early and he was barely coherent when Castiel introduced him to Meg.

But his mother always had a knack for missing the big picture. Sure enough, she sands up and starts screeching:

"Meg Masters?!"

"Uh... yes," Castiel admits and braces himself.

"That girl!" Naomi shouts, furious. "She was... she was such a bad influence on you, Castiel! She made you skip classes! She made you drink!"

Castiel doesn't want to tell her that he was misbehaving way before he met Meg, only in a different way. And Meg never made him do anything he didn't want to do already, she merely... facilitated his rebellious behavior.

And besides, it was rich of her to call him out for drinking when back then Chuck had been drunk more often than not around the house.

"That was a long time ago, mother," he protests instead. "She's a doctor now. She helps people..."

"She convinced you to go to San Francisco instead of Dartmouth!" Naomi continues to protest. "You could've had a brilliant career as a lawyer, you could have been a representative, like Michael...!"

Castiel grimaces for a second, but then the realization hits him:

"I don't have to listen to this." He puts down his coffee and turns around. "I made my choice and I'm happy with it and Meg had nothing to do with it. I'm sorry you never came around to accept that, mother."

"Castiel James Shurley, don't you turn your back on me!" Naomi threatens him, but Castiel does exactly that. "Castiel!"

He leaves the kitchen and climbs the stairs to get his equipment. It's probably too early to go to the hall where the rehearsal dinner will take place, but he just needs to get out of the house.

It was a bad idea to stay there. He should've got a hotel room.

"Castiel," Chuck calls him just as he is getting out of the door.

Castiel sighs deeply and turns to look at him.

"I have to get going..."

"No, I know that, I know," Chuck says, taking a step closer to him. "I just... I wanted to apologize for your mother. She's... you know she's a little emotional when it comes to that period of our lives."

Castiel doesn't bother to reply that Naomi is emotional when it comes to everything. Instead, he waits by the door in case Chuck has something else to say. His father changes his body weight from one foot to the other, but he doesn't say anything else. Castiel stretches his hand towards the door handle...

"Invite her over," Chuck says. "I mean, I know you two will probably be busy with all the wedding stuff, but... you know. If you want to, you can... invite her over afterwards. For brunch or something. Before she goes home."

Castiel is surprised enough by this to stop for a second.

"I'll... see if I can talk to her about it," he says and Chuck nods.

Does that sound like a promise? Castiel sure hopes it doesn't, because there's too many things to consider still. Like, why did Meg leave without saying goodbye? The question starts bothering him again the second he's alone in his car. He turns on the radio, but it doesn't help: the pop song that comes on reminds him, a little bit, vaguely, about the first time he asked Meg to dance.

Or maybe he's just eager to revisit that memory.

 

* * *

 

He was invited to Mary Winchester and Azazel Masters' wedding because he was Dean's friend, but to his great relief, no one else from his family was. So there was no risk of some of Michael making a grand speech and boring everyone at the table or Gabriel making an inappropriate joke or Hannah, Hael and Samandriel playing a game and crashing against a table. And above all, there was no risk of his father getting drunk on the champagne and having a fight with his mother in front of all the other guests.

It was just him. Him and his sweaty palms and racing heart as he followed Meg through the door where she'd just sneaked out.

The garden outside was beautiful, with all the flowers in bloom and a fountain with a little chubby angel that poured water from the harp he was playing. Meg strode towards it and sat on its edge. She was wearing a lavender dress and she had flowers in her hair, the same as all the other maids of honor, but in his opinion, she was the most beautiful of them all.

At this point, he had accepted he had a crush on her. It was probably irrational on his part, but whenever he saw her at school or at Dean's house when he visited him, his mouth went dry and he started stuttering. The only time she'd had a conversation with her that lasted more than five minutes and consisted on more than monosyllables had been that day in the church's yard. He didn't know her enough to like her as much as he did and if Dean was to be believed, she was actually a pretty horrible person. So Castiel couldn't exactly talk to him about how much he liked her.

His brothers were out of the question too: Michael would chastise him for thinking about girls instead of focusing on his studies and getting good grades like their mother expected of them and Gabriel would tease him relentlessly. His father was always too drunk to have a meaningful conversation with him. So in the end, Castiel had gone for advice to Hannah. She was always the sibling he had been closest to after all and she a girl. She should have some sort of insight on how girls' brains worked.

"You have to be confident and just talk to her like a person," Hannah had recommended.

"See, that is exactly the problem," he'd replied. "I can't talk to her."

He hadn't explained the way his throat close when he was near her or how his thoughts became scattered and his tongue clumsy. But Hannah seemed to understand it nonetheless, because she'd shaken her head and sighed.

"Well... ask her to dance at the reception, then. Girls like boys who take initiative."

And that was exactly what Castiel was trying to do when he approached her at the venue's garden. It would have been infinitely easier if he didn't feel like he was dying. And also if she hadn't looked so absolutely miserable: her eyes were red and puffy, like she was about to cry or crying already. He was ready to make a retreat as soon as he noticed that, but in that moment, she looked up and caught his eye.

"What do you want, Clarence?" she asked. Her smoky voice sounded even rougher from the tears she was holding and Castiel had to swallow a couple of times before he managed to speak.

"Are you okay?"

"What's it to you?" she replied angrily. She wiped her tears with the dress' sleeve.

Before he had time to think about it, Castiel approached her and took out his handkerchief from his pocket. At least, this he could do for her. Meg looked at it and then at his face with suspicion, as if she suspected it was some sort of prank. In the end, with trembling hands, she accepted it and sank her face on it for a while. Her shoulders shook with the violence of a sob and then another, and another.

Castiel wasn't sure what to do. He didn't know what the problem was or how to make her feel better. So he sat by her side in the fountain's edge and put a hand on her arm. Amazingly, she didn't try to slap him away or told him to go away. She simply continued crying for five minutes longer until she managed to calm herself. She took a couple of deep shaky breaths and squeezed Castiel's handkerchief in her hands.

"I can't believe it happened," she whispered. "I mean, I knew it was going to happen, but I just can't believe... he actually did marry her."

Castiel was a little disconcerted.

"Your dad? Were you... not expecting this?" he said. "You moved here months ago because of that."

"You're an idiot," Meg snapped at him. "Of course I knew it was going to happen. I was... I guess I was just hoping something would stop it, you know? But now he's married her and I'm stuck here forever."

"It's not so bad."

"Really?" Meg let out a snicker and turned to look at him. "Name one thing that's good about this town."

Castiel opened his mouth and then he closed it again. She had a point there. Lawrence was small and everyone knew about each other's business. He hated that people looked at him with utter pity or that they used that special tone of voice when they asked if his dad was okay and if his family needed anything. He wasn't even about Dean anymore. His best friend was acting weird and distant around him lately. Castiel attributed it to the fact that his mom was getting married and it bothered him, but that didn't mean he didn't resent him a little.

So he went for the next best thing that he could think to tell her:

"Well, it's not forever. You're only here until you graduate and go to college."

"I'm not going to college," Meg groaned. "I ain't got the brains."

Castiel was surprised by that affirmation. True, Meg didn't usually participate in the few classes they had in common, but if a professor happened to call on her, she always knew the answer. He thought about telling her that he believed she was smart, but he didn't want her to think he was some sort of creep that paid excessive attention to her. Even though that was exactly what he was.

"Well, if you don't, you don't have to stay here," he insisted. "You can just... go. Somewhere. Anywhere."

Meg made a sound that was a lot like a strangled laugh.

"Aren't you an incurable optimist, Clarence?"

"Thank you," Castiel said, even though he wasn't sure if that had been a compliment or not. "I still don't know who Clarence is."

Meg shook her head, as if his lack of knowledge for pop culture exasperated her. But at the very least she wasn't crying anymore.

"Yeah. Thank you or whatever," she said, extending the handkerchief back at him. "Guess we have to go back inside."

Castiel looked down at the wet piece of cloth that she was handing him and realized it was now or never. If they went back inside, Dean might see them and Castiel would be too embarrassed to ask her then and now that she wasn't upset, maybe...

"Hey, what are you...?"

"Dance with me," he blurted out. Immediately, his cheeks started burning, but he gathered up his courage to look at her in the face and continued: "I mean... please? If you want to? Just one song."

Meg stared at him with both eyebrows raised, blinking as if she couldn't believe what he'd just said. Her lips were curved in a smirk and Castiel was absolutely sure that she was going to laugh at him and it would be so humiliating and horrible and he just couldn't...

"Okay."

"Okay?" he repeated. That word didn't make any sense. He'd heard it and he knew what it meant of course, but it just didn't make any sense coming from her lips...

"Okay, I'll dance one song with you," Meg said, confirming the fact he wasn't dreaming or hallucinating. "But I'll ask you a question and you have to answer honestly."

Castiel was so elated he didn't even think about how strange those terms were. He stood up and stretched his hand at her right there. They could hear the music and the chatter coming from the inside, but when she stepped closer to him and put one hand on his shoulder while intertwining her fingers with his on the other, he felt like he was floating several meters above everyone else, walking on clouds as he spun around with an arm around her waist.

"You're not half bad at this," she told him, tilting her head as if she was surprised about that.

"Thank you," Castiel said, smiling.

She really looked beautiful. Her brown eyes were enormous and expressive and her full lips look a shade redder than usual. He never noticed when other girls wore make up or not, but with her, he wanted to memorize every detail of that moment.

Later on, Meg and him would discuss what song it was that they danced to. She said that it must have been a Beatles' one because that was Mary's favorite band, but when she replayed the songs to him, he couldn't recognize any of it and insisted that it must have been a different artist. Or maybe it was because he simply couldn't care less about the music, only the fact that she was so close to him and that he could feel the warmth radiating from her.

But they both agreed that ended too soon. Castiel stopped spinning, with his stomach tied up in a knot. He couldn't believe that he had gone this far. He couldn't believe he was still looking at her lips and considering doing what he was considering.

Meg let go of his hand and stepped away from him before he could gather enough courage to do it.

"Okay," she said. "And now for the question."

He'd completely forgotten about her condition, and now that she was bringing it back, he felt completely unprepared for whatever it was. But Meg didn't give him time to brace for it:

"Why did you lie for me?"

That took him by surprise. He was expecting something embarrassing or funny, something that would force him to confess blackmail material that she could use to get him to do her bidding (not that she needed to). Maybe that was just a secondary effect of growing in the same household as Gabriel.

"What?"

"Back in December, in the churchyard," Meg reminded him. "You lied for me. You told Mary it was you who had been smoking. Why did you do that?"

Castiel was surprised she remembered. He had done it without a second thought, before he had time to really reflect on what the consequences could be. And later, when Hael had asked him the same thing, he had given her the same reason he was about to give to Meg:

"I didn't want you to get in trouble."

Neither Meg nor Hael had been satisfied with that answer.

"She's mean and she made fun of you," Hael had protested.

"Well, sometimes we have to help people, even if they're mean. Isn't that what Pastor Jim says?"

That had been enough for his little sister, but he suspected it wouldn't be for Meg. Sure enough, she crossed her arms above her chest and continued looking at him with growing suspicion.

"Why?"

Castiel swallowed loudly. As much as he thought he had managed to keep it together until that point, he knew his self-control would fail him if he confessed the truth.

"You said only one question."

Meg's smile bloomed slowly on her lips and finally, it illuminated her whole face just a moment before she chuckled. Castiel found himself smiling back at her.

"Fair enough," she said. "Let's go back inside. I don't want to miss the cake."

She turned her back on him and strode away. Castiel was left with the feeling that he could have done or said something else, but the moment had passed. He would still treasure that moment for months to come. He would fall asleep thinking about her smile, that smile that had been only for him, he would fantasize with her hands on her body and the way their bodies had stood so close. He didn't know there were sweeter moments in store for the two of them. And also some bitter ones.

"Hey, Cas, were you've been?" Dean said as soon as he saw him come back inside. "I was looking for you. I wanted to introduce you to my cousin Gwen, so you could ask her to dance."

Castiel had seen Gwen. She was a very pretty girl with short black hair and an incisive smile, but with Meg's smile still fresh in his mind, every girl on the planet looked plane and boring to him. He shook his head.

"Sorry. I don't... I don't feel like dancing with a girl right now."

Dean looked at him a little puzzled, but then he laughed out loud and slung an arm around his shoulder.

"Yeah, you're right, buddy. Girls are lame. Let's go get some cake."

 

* * *

 

The venue where the rehearsal dinner and reception of Dean and Benny's wedding will be taking place wasn't much different than the one where Mary and Azazel's wedding had happened. The dance floor is a little smaller and there is no fountain with a little harp-playing angel outside. Other than that, however, it's pretty much the same: a large room with round tables, except for the one that takes up most of the main wall where the grooms and their party will sit.

Castiel mounts the giant picture of Dean and Benny he took the day before in an easel by the door and takes some photos of the decorations and the empty tables that will be filled with guests in two hours’ time and when he's done, he sits on a bench outside, unsure of what to do with himself. He checks his phone for the twelfth time, but of course, there aren't any missing calls and unread messages. He consoles himself thinking that of course Meg isn't going to call him, she knew they would be seeing each other again in a few hours. Then he remembers they never did get around exchanging numbers.

The sensation that something is amiss keeps growing, much as he tries to ignore it. The night before meant too much for him for it not to. After years of doubting and wondering and almost calling (he thought about trying to track her down when he heard about Azazel's death, but he refrained since he figured Meg wouldn't be in shape to talk to anyone at that moment), he finally had the chance to reconnect with her.

In the past, he was too slow and too hesitant, and as a consequence, he didn't have as much time with her as he could have. Now he's afraid he moved too fast and somehow blew it again.

Finally, after what seems like a lifetime of anxiety, the sun sets in the horizon and the waiters and cooks arrive and start preparing the dinner. Castiel stands awkwardly to the side until someone arrives. To his great surprise, it’s John Winchester, followed closely by his sons.

"Nice place, Dean," he comments, as he looks around. "A little expensive, maybe?"

"No, not at all." Dean shrugs. “Benny knew some people, so… we got a discount.”

Mr. Winchester hums noncommittally and moves to eye the picture of the husbands to be.

“You’re getting married in your uniform?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” Dean asks, crossing his arms, defensively.

“No reason.” John raises his hand as if defending himself from an attack. “I was just asking.”

“Hey, Dad… remember Cas?” Sam asks grabbing his friend by the arm and practically shoving him at his father. “Castiel Shurley? He went to high school with Dean and he’s taking the pics.”

If John doesn’t remember him, he does a good job at hiding it.

“Of course. How are you, son?”

“I’m fine. Thank you, Mr. Winchester,” Castiel says. “Uh… you want me to take some photos of you and Dean?” he asks, holding up his camera. “Once you’ve changed into your formal clothes, of course.”

“You don’t have to do that if you don’t want to, Dad,” Dean replies almost immediately.

“No.” John shakes his head. “No, of course I’d love to take some pictures! Let’s go grab the suits from the car.”

Dean throws a glance at his brother and best friend over his shoulder before following John outside. Sam sighs deeply and shakes his head.

“He’s a little on edge,” he comments, though he doesn’t clarify is he means Dean or John. “It’s just… kind of weird that Dad showed after he made such a display of this not being a good idea.”

“I didn’t know Dean and him… had problems,” Castiel said, trying to find the most diplomatic way to put it.

“I mean, he was fine when Dean brought up Benny during our summer road trip,” Sam explains. “It was when he found they were getting married that he freaked.”

Castiel nods comprehensively, because there’s really nothing more that he can do at that point. He tries to change the topic, but of course, that doesn’t turn out any better for him, since his mind is still fix on one topic alone:

“Is Meg coming?” He closes his eyes and chastises himself for a moment. “Sorry, it’s just…”

“Yeah, she’s coming with Mom and Benny’s party,” Sam answers, not even making fun of him. Castiel appreciates that. “We thought it was best to, you know. Keep Mom and Dad at arm’s length distance.” He motions separating the two and Castiel nods again, because he really has not much to say. As much as his mother’s histrionics and his father’s alcohol put a strain on their marriage for many years, he can’t imagine what it would be like to keep them separated for the sake of civility at all times.

Dean and John look very good in their suits. Of course, Castiel doesn’t make them lay down on the grass, but he takes pictures of them shaking hands and hugging each other. Dean is definitely forcing out his smile and John seems to be almost overcompensating by asking Castiel which angle is best, but he still manages to make some decent shots. He also takes some shots of both Winchester brothers together and with their father. And while he loses himself in his job, he doesn’t think about Meg once.

Which is good, because when she finally arrives, he’s a lot calmer than he was that morning. He’s had time to adjust and prepare to talk to her a lot calmer. When he sees her standing around a bunch of other guests as they wait for the announcement that dinner is ready, his heart starts racing again, but outwardly, he remains as calm as he can. She’s wearing a short black dress that hugs her figure lovingly and has her hair loose, her long dark locks hanging down her back. She’s laughing at something Benny just told her, her head thrown back to reveal a delicate, silver necklace around her throat.

She is, as always, breathtakingly beautiful.

Benny spots him before he can stretch his hand to tap on Meg’s shoulder.

“Hey, chief,” he says, smiling. “How’s my underwear model future husband looking?”

“He seems… adequately handsome?” Castiel says, not sure how he’s supposed to answer to that.

Benny and Meg both laugh at him. Castiel is left with the distinctive impression that he’s completely missing the joke, but he tries to smile not to kill their good mood.

“Can’t believe Dean’s been hiding you from me, lil’ sistah,” Benny comments.

“Well, you know. He could never handle my greatness,” Meg replies with a shrug. “Hey, Cas, take a picture of us, will you?”

Castiel does, and after he’s done, Benny excuses himself and goes away to speak with someone else. Meg’s smile slowly becomes a little less jovial once she realizes they have been left alone.

“Hello,” he says.

“Hey, Clarence.” Meg replies. A waitress passes by with a platter full of champagne glasses and Meg hastily grabs one for herself. She gulps down half of it before she turns to look at him again. “So…”

“I missed you this morning,” Castiel comments and Meg cringes.

“Yeah… I just… I didn’t want to make it awkward.”

“Why would it be awkward?” Castiel tilts his head. “I mean, I know my father saw you. I’m sorry if he said anything…”

“He didn’t… that’s not the problem. I think things might have got a little confusing last night.”

“I don’t understand,” Castiel frowns.

Meg finishes up the rest of the champagne before speaking:

“Don’t get me wrong. It was great. And I think you’re great and I’m glad we met again. But given our… history, I don’t think there should be a repeat.”

“Oh.”

That’s everything Castiel manages to say. There’s a sudden tightness in his chest that prevents him from speaking, from telling her he understood what she meant and that she doesn’t need to keep talking. And she does:

“A lot of time has passed. We’re different people. I know I’m different and… dammit, Cas, we were kids back then. I don’t want you to get any… ideas.”

She grimaces again as the word “ideas” leaves her mouth and Castiel knows exactly what kind of ideas she means.

Exactly the kind of ideas he’s been having since he set his eyes on her again.

“No,” he says, quickly. “No, of course not. It was… a fun night between friends. That’s all.”

"Right," Meg adds, with a laugh that's a little too loud for it to be completely sincere. "I mean, we're not even going to see each other again after this weekend."

"Yes, conquer and run. Isn't that your M. O.?"

He bites his tongue, but it's too late. The words have already left his mouth and hit their mark. Meg's smile disappears completely and they just can't keep on pretending that everything is fine. They can't keep pretending that it was nothing.

Castiel tries, though. He looks away and tries to move past Meg while muttering "Excuse me", but he should have known it wasn't going to be that easy.

"Hey! What exactly did you mean by that?"

"Nothing," Castiel says, but he can't even hide the irritation he's feeling.

Meg frowns and twists her mouth, the way he knows mean she's getting angry as well. It's amazing how little she's changed after all.

"You can't still be mad about that."

"I'm not," Castiel lies. "It's like you said, we were kids. It doesn't matter anymore."

He turns his back on her and strides away before she can get another word in. He's utterly frustrated now, not only at her, but at himself. Years dreaming about a chance, about the things he would say to her if she ever came back into his life. And now he threw it all away with his eagerness.

He feels like a complete idiot.

He throws himself into his work to try to forget about it. He films the very moving speech Mary delivers about Dean and Benny and how happy she is for her son, he takes more picture of the guests and the venue and prays for the night to end. Sometimes, when he happens to find Meg at the other end of his lens, he lingers on her a little bit longer, but he doesn't try to approach her or talk to her again.

He doesn't think she'd be interested in it, anyway. She spends a lot of time hanging around Benny and Sam, laughing loud enough that he can hear her. And she catches glass after glass of champagne, to the point that by the time the dessert is served, her cheeks are red and her eyes are far too shiny.

Castiel knows it's none of his business, but he really wished he knew who was driving her home.

It doesn't make a difference in the end, though, because when he comes over to Dean and Benny to ask them if there's anything else they'd like him to photograph, John Winchester is speaking a little too loud:

"Come on, you call this drinking? I'm thinking we should go out and give Dean a proper bachelor party. What do you say, Bobby?"

"Well, I'd have to ask my wife what she thinks about this plan of yours," Bobby says, but it's clear from his beam that he's also on board with the idea.

The only one who doesn't seem to be is Dean himself.

"You don't have to do that, Dad, really," he says, shifting his weight from one leg to the other, awkwardly. "Just... just... you know, Sam and I already did all of that."

"Oh, yeah, all of it," Sam says, awkward that he was suddenly put on the spot. "Stripper club, drinking... all that good stuff. I'm the best man, so I... I did that."

"But you didn't do it with your old man," John insists. "Please, son. Let's just have a good time!"

Dean looks around as if he's looking for a reason to refuse and failing to find one. His eyes fix on Benny, but he's not being of much help either. In fact, for maybe the first time in the night, he looks a little angry, for what Castiel can tell.

"That's fine, chér," he drawls out. "You go out with your dad. I'm just gonna stay here and have myself a party with the rest of the girls. Hey, Meg!"

He strides away towards the coat hanger where Meg is apparently trying to recover hers. Castiel watches her face closely: she starts out a little confused, but eventually another smile blooms in her face and in no time, she's nodding and laughing at something Benny told her.

Castiel tries to ignore the stab in his gut as he turns his head to Dean.

"I'm sorry, what did you say?"

"I asked if you were coming, Cas," his friend repeats.

Castiel looks once more at Meg, who is now hanging unto Benny's arm and laughing like she doesn't have a care in the world and suddenly, the perspective of drinking his misery away is extremely appealing.


	5. Chapter 5

Liz tries to shush them as she opens the door to the café, but Meg is in that stage of her drunkenness where everything is funny to her and Charlie and Jo are singing a Cindy Lauper song at the top of their lungs. The only one who seems mildly sober as they stumble inside is Benny, who has been complaining about the dinner the entire way there.

"They call that a dinner? Those bite size things couldn't satisfy a model with an eating disorder!"

"Well, if you were gonna complain about the entire thing, you might as well have cooked it yourself," Liz says, rolling her eyes at him.

"Oh, I intend to," Benny says. He takes off his jacket and puts it in the back of a chair. "Hang on to your hats, ladies. I'm about to give you the full Cajun experience."

Meg laughs, because that is a funny thing to say, but she sits next to the other three on the counter while Benny fishes an apron and gets to work. He chops the vegetables and heats up the pans, all the time telling them exactly what the catering service did wrong and why he hopes they step up their game for the reception tomorrow.

“Marrying a guy whose father hate me? I can do that, but I’ll be damned if I let my guests starve!”

“Oh, come on, Uncle John doesn’t hate you,” Jo replies.

“He does a damn good impression of it, though,” Benny replies, as he cuts through several baguettes and leaves them open in five separate dishes. “Couldn’t even look me in the eye all night.”

“He’s not… bad,” Charlie says. “He’s just… old school.”

“Nice way of saying the man looks like twice his age,” Meg comments. “Damn good reason to stay away from beer. You guys think he’s trying to be nice to Dean because he might need a liver one of these days?”

Benny and Liz chuckle at her comment, but Charlie shakes her head and Jo starts another defense of her uncle:

“Hey, if there’s one good thing to be said about him, it’s that he loves Sam and Dean.”

Meg can’t really argue with that. She really never had a relationship with the man himself (it would be a little weird, with her being the stepdaughter of his ex-wife and all), but she remembers his car roaring down the street when he came to pick up the boys for their summer road trip. Sam would run out of the house screaming: “Dad!” and John would lean over to scoop him up. Dean came behind his little brother, dragging their bags behind and give his dad a mocking military salute. John would reply by pulling him closer to hug him.

She always did think that he was the kind of man who would die for his kids, but that didn’t mean he isn’t homophobic. Just that he’s willing to suck it up and be at Dean’s wedding.

“Well, I don’t care if he hates me or not,” Benny says, as he places whatever he’s cooking on the pan on top of the sliced breads. “I’m marrying the handsome son of a bitch of his oldest son. Try and stop me.”

“I don’t think anyone’s going to stop you. But I do pity you for getting stuck with Dean Winchester for the rest of your life,” Meg replies. Liz laughs as well and Benny lets out a deep chuckle.

“Oh, trust me, I know he can be a handful sometimes,” Benny chuckles. “But I wouldn’t have him any other way.” He turns around and puts the dishes in front of them. “Po’boy sandwiches for everybody. Bon appetite, girls.”

Meg takes a bit of hers and immediately her mouth is invaded with the taste of oysters and some sort of special sauce that Benny poured on top of it. He’s absolutely right, compared to this, the food they served at the rehearsal dinner is bland and unsatisfying.

“Oh, God, I think I just came a little,” Charlie comments between bites.

“Never thought I’d hear you say something a man did made you come,” Jo says, bumping her shoulder against her girlfriend’s playfully.

“You guys are the cutest,” Liz comments. “How long have you been together?”

“Three years,” Charlie says, squeezing Jo’s hand.

“And are you thinking about… you know, tying the knot?”

“Oh, God, you sound like my mother,” Jo complains. _“‘It’s legal now, girls, you could absolutely do it! Dean’s doing it!’_ ”

“I’m waiting for Google to move me up the ladder a little more,” Charlie adds. “Jo’s thinking about taking the exam for detective, so we have a lot going on. Maybe we’ll consider it when life’s a little less hectic.”

“Ah, taking things slow.” Liz turns to Benny and very pointedly crooks an eyebrow. “How about that?”

“Elizabeth here thinks I’m rushing into this marriage thing because Dean and I have been together only a year,” Benny replies, rolling his eyes and turning towards Meg. “But who cares about her opinion?”

“Right, I’m only your best friend and business partner,” Liz huffs. “Who cares what I think it’s best for you?”

“But I feel confident, because believe it or not, this is actually the second time I’m going through this,” Benny continues, ignoring her. “First time didn’t turn out so well.”

“Who was the idiot who renounced to eating your food?” Meg asks, eliciting another chuckle from him. “If I was Dean, I would literally keep you chained in the kitchen.”

“Who says he’s not thinking it?” Benny jokes, but his face turns serious almost immediately. “After I divorced Andrea, I didn’t think I would find anyone else who made me happy. And then that crazy hobo ran in here… I should send him a thank you card. Because right after him, in walked the love of my life. And I had this little voice in the back of my head telling me I’d regret it forever if I let him go without giving him my number.”

“Okay, listen, I’m not saying Dean isn’t great,” Liz interrupts. “But how are you so sure he’s the love of your life? I mean, seriously…”

Benny shrugs. His beam has appeared again and he has a dreamy expression in his blue eyes that indicates he’s not paying real attention to any of them.

“I’m a hopeless romantic,” he admits. “When you know you’ve found that person, you know it. And you gotta hold on with both hands and never let go. Ain’t that right, girls?”

“Amen!” Jo says, before slinging an arm around Charlie’s shoulders and pulling him closer for a kiss.

“Yeah,” Meg mutters. “It’s like finding a unicorn.”

Benny crooks an eyebrow at her.

“You lost a unicorn there, sis?”

“Lost it, found it, most likely lost it again,” Meg explains, with a shrug. “I just never seem to find him at the right time of my life.”

“Well, keep trying,” Benny encourages her and pushes another beer in her direction. “I’m sure eventually you’ll get it right.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Meg laughs.

 

* * *

 

During the summer between junior and senior year of high school, Sam and Dean left with their dad and Azazel and Mary went to Hawaii for their honeymoon. Tom came from college to “housesit”. For Azazel that meant “babysit Meg” and for Tom, it meant “make sure she didn’t die and that’s about it”. He didn’t nag her to get out of bed early and he let her watch all the bad television she wanted. He couldn’t cook, so they loaded up on junk food and every night was pizza night.

It was paradise. If Meg had made any friends, she probably could’ve invited them for the most epic party ever. As she was still a bit of a social outcast, she was happy to spend the time sitting in the living room munching on chips and watching an old romcom while Tom slumbered with his head crooked to one side on the arm chair and the fan lazily spun to keep the hot air at bay.

She was doing exactly that when the loud doorbell ring interrupted the soporific afternoon air. Meg’s eyes barely left the screen, but then she sank further in the couch and popped another chip in her mouth. It wasn’t until it rang for the third time that she felt compelled to stretch her leg and kick Tom in the shin.

“What, what?” Tom muttered, shaking his head like a dog coming out of the water.

“There’s someone at the door,” Meg informed him, her still fixed on the TV.

Tom glared at her. “And you couldn’t get it?”

“What if it’s a rapist that kidnaps teen girls?” Meg asked, shrugging.

Tom groaned, because of course a rapist that kidnapped girls wouldn’t ring the doorbell at five o’clock in the afternoon, but he got up, stretched and dragged his feet to open.

“Can I help you?”

“Yes, hello. I was… can I speak to Meg, please?”

The voice almost made Meg jump out of her skin. What the hell was Castiel doing there? She looked down at herself and grimaced: she was wearing a pair of ugly shorts, an old shirt stained with a noticeable hole in it and no shoes. Her hair was a mess because she was supposed to wash it that night and she hadn’t even plucked her eyebrows since the last day of school.

And she also couldn’t help but to wonder why the hell did she care about her appearance. It was just Castiel, Dean’s dorky friend, who really had no business coming to the house while Dean was gone. But it was also Castiel, who had lied for her in the churchyard and asked her to dance at the wedding. Castiel, who Meg sometimes caught staring in her direction and who didn’t look away anymore when she stared right back at him.

“Wait here,” Tom said. At least he had the good sense to close the door before he turned his attention to Meg. “Did you have a friend coming over?”

“Stall him!” Meg shouted, as she abandoned the bowl of chips on the table and fled upstairs.

If someone had put a gun to her head, she probably still wouldn’t admit the reason she spent ten minutes going through her closet was because she cared about what Castiel thought of her. She wouldn’t accept that sometimes she caught herself thinking about his eyes and trying to describe the exact shade of blue they were and she would cut her own tongue before admitting sometimes the spot in her waist where he had laid her hand stung.

Because of all the people she could have a crush on, Dean’s dorky friend had to be the worst of all, for several reasons.

She still put on a good pair of jeans, sandals and a pretty shirt, but not to pretty that he would think she chose it to try to impress him. She needed to keep at least some semblance of dignity.

She did stop by the bathroom to tie her hair in a bun and apply some lip-gloss. It wasn’t a matter of letting him see what a mess she was either.

She found them in the kitchen when she came down. Castiel sat in front of a glass of lemonade that remained untouched, while Tom leaned back on the counter, sipping his and inspecting Castiel with very attentive eyes.

“Ah, there she is,” he mentioned casually. “Hello, Meg. Your friend Castiel Shurley, who lives two blocks from here, was just casually telling me how he meant to just pay you a visit without calling ahead. Even though he has the house number because he’s friends with Dean.”

“Why don’t you interrogate people when you’re actually a journalist?” Meg told him, rolling her eyes at him. “You mind giving us some privacy?”

“Of course. You can go into the backyard.”

“Where you can watch us from the window, right?”

“Dad gave me the order to take care of you and I intend to do just that,” Tom replied, shrugging.

Meg decided not to point out that not even trying to get her to eat a vegetable in the six weeks Mary and Azazel were gone wasn’t exactly taking care of her. She simply huffed and jerked her head towards the door.

“Let’s go, Clarence.”

“Uh… yes,” Castiel said and stood up a little clumsily. “It was… nice meeting you, Tom.”

“Call me Mr. Masters.”

Meg didn’t find anything to throw at him, but she still flipped him the bird the second Castiel turned his back on them. She slammed the door shut and moved towards a tree right next to the fence, far away enough from the house that Tom couldn’t hear what they were saying.

“Okay,” she said, turning towards Castiel and crossing her arms over her chest. “Did you forget something on Dean’s room that you need to recover or something? ‘Cause I can help you sneak in, but you have to promise not to tell him.”

Castiel’s cheeks were bright red, but Meg doubted it was due to the heat. However, when he took a deep breath and started speaking, his voice came out firm:

“No, I’m not here for that. I came here for you.”

Meg crooked an eyebrow, speechless. Was he really going to do what she thought it was going to do? Would he really dare?

Castiel interpreted her silence as an invitation to go on and raised his hand. Meg hadn’t noticed he had a flower with him before, but now he was offering it to her: a single red rose with its thorns still intact. She wondered if he had requested it like that from the flower shop or if he had stolen it from a garden while on his way there.

“I would like to ask you… out,” he said. He cleared his throat and clarified: “As in, on a date. With me.”

After he finished blurting out that string of words, he sighed, as if he was relieved. As if Meg’s answer was irrelevant now that he had gone through the daunting act of asking her out.

And now it was Meg who couldn’t find the words. The seconds slipped by and the only thing she could do was stare at him, while Castiel still held the rose out to her and waited, relief turning into worry as she continued not saying a word.

“You, uh… would you like to?” he insisted, his voice a little lower than before.

“You do know I’m Dean’s step-sister, right?” Meg asked. She didn’t know why she needed to get that out of the way in the first place.

“Yes, I am aware of that,” Castiel replied, narrowing his eyes a little bit as if he failed to see the connection between that fact and his invitation.

“Don’t you guys have like, codes against that kind of thing?”

“I… my brother says it would be a problem if you were his actual sister,” Castiel explained. “But since you’re not, then… Dean has no reason to be mad at me.”

Meg tried to hold back her smile, to no avail. She didn’t know exactly what was it about Castiel’s infinite dorkiness that she found so endearing, but it just never failed to make her smile.

“Unless you’re the one who is uncomfortable with that fact,” he added, cringing. “In which case, I’ll just… see myself out. But, uh… I still would like you to have this.”

Meg took the rose from his hand and look at it for a few seconds.

“I don’t like roses,” she commented. “They’re corny. I prefer sunflowers.”

“Oh,” Castiel muttered. “Well, it’s a good thing I didn’t… I had a whole bit prepared about how it reminded me of you because you’re thorny and beautiful, but I sort of forgot it…”

“I also hate poetry.”

“Of course you hate poetry.” Castiel sighed. He almost sounded frustrated, like he had rehearsed the scene in his head (or with his brother’s help, most likely) and she was refusing to follow the script.

And Meg was finding terribly amusing to mess with him a little bit.

“You stutter when you’re nervous,” she pointed out.

“I do, yes. The teachers keep telling me I need to work on that.”

“Do I make you nervous, Clarence?” she asked, taking a step closer to him.

His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat as he swallowed.

“Yes.”

“Why is that?”

“Because I like you a lot.”

He also had no idea how to flirt or act hard to get. That was refreshing, to say the least.

“Yet you came all the way here and asked me out,” she pointed out. “That’s pretty brave.”

“Well, I didn’t really believe you’d say yes, but I had nothing to lose by asking.” Castiel shrugged.

“Another tidbit of brotherly wisdom?”

“No. Actually, Gabriel tried to talk me out of it. He said I’m so ‘socially inept’” – he drew air quotes with his fingers – “that me asking anyone out would end in embarrassment and soul-crushing rejection.”

Meg choked back a laugh and shook her head.

“And how’s it turning up?”

“I don’t feel particularly embarrassed. I am a bit crushed though.”

“Why? I didn’t say no.”

Castiel opened his mouth and closed it again. Then he frowned and stayed very still for a moment, as if he was reviewing the conversation they’d just had up until that point. Meg had recovered her confidence now that the surprise of him being there had worn off, so when he looked down at her again, she smirked.

“Oh,” he repeated, nervousness returning to his features. “Are you going to?”

“No.”

Castiel tilted his head, confused.

“So… y-yes?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be bright and smart and all that?” Meg replied. She fidgeted with the rose and realized that just like Castiel, she had nothing to lose. “I have to ask, though: were you waiting for Dean to leave to ask me?”

Castiel rubbed the back of his neck. It was obvious that even though his friend really had no reason to be mad if they dated, he was worried about his opinion. And that was the last thing Meg needed to convince herself this was a brilliant idea. Anything that annoyed her arrogant, obnoxious stepbrother was fine to do in her book.

“Hey, it’s fine. Maybe the date will be bad and we won’t feel like mentioning it to anyone afterwards.”

“There is always that possibility, yes.” Castiel nodded.

Meg was joking, but Castiel seemed absolutely sure that their date may end in disaster, just like he had been sure that she would turn him down. That lack of assertion bothered her a little bit. He’d had no problem lying to his best friend’s mother, but now, in front of her, he acted like it was a given that everything would fail miserably. They would have to work on that.

“So when you wanna do this?”

“Uh… I-I don’t know. What day are you free?”

“I’m free right now.” Meg grinned. “So… let’s go.”

“Won’t your brother…?”

“Let me worry about him.” Meg took another step, so now she was all over his personal space and looking up at him. “Take me somewhere nice and we’ll see where it goes from there.”

Castiel had to take a couple of breaths, but in the end, he found his determination. He grabbed Meg’s hand (she would have bet anything he didn’t really notice what he was doing) and guided her through the fence’s door, the same Meg had seen him and Dean going through several times in their nocturnal escapades. They found their way around rocks and roots for about ten minutes without saying a word until the path bended and they found themselves on a clearing at the edge of a creak.

Meg’s jaw fell open. The place was beautiful, green and golden in the summer afternoon, with small white flowers growing around a fallen trunk. The water glistened, clear and fresh, running over big dark grey rocks. It was secluded enough that no one could find it if they didn’t know the way, but not too far away that they could get lost among the trees.

“Huh,” she muttered. “So this is where you and Dean come when you go out after curfew?”

“Sometimes,” Castiel admitted.

Meg sat on the trunk and after a moment of hesitation, Castiel did the same. He was close enough that their knees almost touched each other and she wondered why he wasn’t trying to hold her hand again or kiss her. God knew many boys she had sneaked around with would be trying to cope a feel by that point.

But she would discover soon enough Castiel wasn’t like most boys. He also wasn’t like anyone Meg had ever met, before or after.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure, Clarence,” Meg said. “After all, I got to ask you something last time.”

Castiel’s lips twisted in a light smile when he remembered that and Meg’s heart skipped a beat. He really was good-looking with his bright blue eyes and his messy dark hair. And, unlike Dean, he was totally unaware of it.

“Why did you say yes?”

Meg’s first instinct was to get on the defensive. She leaned away from him and crooked her eyebrow.

“Is this your not so subtle way of asking me if I like you back?”

She was careful. It’d happened before. Once boys found out she had a thing for them, they thought she would do anything for them. Just because she liked to dress pretty and wore lipstick, they assumed she was easy and could get her to do anything with them. Meg sometimes rejected them, and sometimes amused herself by teasing them, which had led to them spreading rumors in her old school. She wondered how many of the boys she had dated or gone to dances with had approached her because they were sure at least a fraction of those things were true. How many of them had walked away because she wanted a little of emotional investment before she agreed to do anything with them.

But Castiel wasn’t trying to gain some sort of advantage. He was asking an honest question.

“Yes,” he said, without a trace of hesitation.

Meg shuffled in her seat. He really was messing up all of her expectations.

“One thing you need to know about me, Clarence, is that I don’t like to waste my time on people I’m not at least interested in.”

“So you… like me?” he insisted, cringing as if he realized that wasn’t exactly what she meant but didn’t know how else to approach it.

“I’m… intrigued by you,” Meg said, because admitting out right she couldn’t stop thinking about him would be out of character. She still turned her body towards him and fixed her eyes on him. “I think there’s more to you than what meets the eye.”

“I’m not sure…” Castiel started, but Meg was done talking.

She grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him down towards her. Their mouth clashed clumsily and the moment they were together, Meg knew that he had never done this before.

Her first kiss was with some boy whose name she didn’t even remember, at a house party playing spin the bottle. Since then, she had got better kisses, more experience, more demanding kisses. Kisses at the end of dates, kisses meant to distract her from a hand wandering up her shirt. Kisses because she was bored and it was fun to learn to kiss.

But no kiss like this one. No kiss that had made her heart beat faster and her head dizzy like that, no kiss that had awakened the butterflies in her stomach with such intensity. No kiss so honest and so open. Perhaps because she was giving this kiss, because Castiel hadn’t asked for it and wasn’t asking anything else from her. He put a hand on her cheek, but nothing else. His fingertips burned when they broke apart.

It took Meg a second to catch her breath, but eventually she managed.

“Does that answer your question?” she asked. She didn’t think her smirk came out as cheeky as usual.

“Uh… some,” he said, between gasps for air. “I think I might need some… further clarification.”

This time, he leaned over to kiss her.


	6. Chapter 6

“You wanna slow a little bit, buddy?”

Castiel is building a pyramid of shot glasses and he has absolutely no intention of doing that. He’s still replaying his last conversation with Meg, the thousands of ways he could not have been a jerk and push her away for sure. So until the voice in his head telling him he screwed up forever goes quiet, he will continue to drink his sorrows away. He recognizes Dean’s concerns for him and he appreciates them, but they’re unwanted at this very moment.

It’s funny. Growing up, when his father was drunk out of his mind more often than not (Chuck Shurley certainly took the “write drunk, edit sober” advice to the extreme and also edited while drunk), Castiel had sworn himself over and over that he would never even touch a beer. That had changed at some point in college, when he discovered that booze wasn’t really the enemy, just the kind of person one became when they consumed it.

And in this case, when he’s trying to become an unconscious person, booze can be a man’s best friend.

“I just… I just need one more,” he insists and beckons the bartender to pour him another. “I just need the tip…”

“Seriously, Cas,” Dean says, putting a hand on his forearm. “I think that’s more than enough…”

“Why are you always telling me what to do?”

 

* * *

 

“Why are you always telling me what to do?” Castiel asked Dean.

It was the day before school began again and Dean had been acting weird since he’d come back from the road trip with his dad. No, Castiel corrected himself, he’d been acting weird since Castiel had told him that he was dating Meg now.

They were in their spot by the fallen tree, standing face to face. It was an odd feeling. Castiel could always count on Dean. He was his best and oldest friend, he knew everything about Castiel. But Castiel still had been nervous about telling him about Meg, about how they had kissed (and all the kisses they had shared since) and by Dean’s reaction, he had been right to be. And it angered Castiel that his friend couldn’t be happy for him. He’d never been angry with Dean before.

So he’d finally gathered the courage to ask Dean what was wrong with him and of course, Dean had flat out denied there was something wrong. Only to then add he didn’t think it was good for Castiel to be dating Meg.

Dean sank his hands in his pockets and threw a sulking glance at him.

“I’m not telling you what to do,” he argued. “I’m just asking why the hell it had to be her. There are like, a dozen chicks in school that I could’ve introduced you to…”

“Well, I’m not like you, Dean,” Castiel replied. “I don’t want to be with a dozen girls. I just want to be with Meg.”

“I haven’t been with a dozen girls!”

“Amanda Heckerling.” Castiel raises a finger in the air and starts counting: “Robin Holt, Cassie Robinson…”

“Okay!” Dean protested, raising his hands as if to defend himself from an attack. “Fine! I’ve dated more girls than you. Which is why you should listen to me when I tell you that Meg is trouble. Man, we haven’t even really hang out without her since I got back!”

“So?” Castiel cut him off. “You always do that to me. You get a crush on a girl and then you ignore me for weeks. We don’t hang out again until after you’ve broken up with them. I want to spend time with the both of you, because you’re my friend and she’s my girlfriend and I want you to get along…”

“Well, it’s weird! And I don’t even want to be around when you two are smooching. It makes me sick to my stomach!”

He might have been being hyperbolic, Castiel reflected later. He might have just been mad and spoken without thinking about the hurt his words would cause to Castiel. That didn’t make his words sting any less. Castiel stepped backwards and squared his shoulders.

“Don’t be around me, then!”

He turned his back on him.  Part of him expected Dean to come after him, to tell him that this argument was stupid and they couldn’t throw away years of friendship over this. Instead, Dean shouted:

“Fine! Don’t come crying to me when she stomps all over you!”

Castiel didn’t answer or look over his shoulder. He just kept walking away with the bitter sensation none of them had really said what they meant.

 

* * *

 

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“That… that time in the creek…” Castiel mumbles, leaning his entire weight against Dean’s body. “I yelled at you.”

“Buddy, I have no idea what you’re talking about. But apology accepted, I guess.”

Castiel is too drunk to walk. A part of his brain realizes this, he realizes that I the reason Dean has an arm around his waist and is slowly dragging him across the bar. Castiel tries to collaborate, he tries to move his feet, but suddenly is like his body refuses to answer to him. So he just stumbles awkwardly as Dean tries to take him closer to the door.

“Dean, wait. Wait. I’ve got something to tell you.”

“You can tell me in the car, Cas.”

“No. It’s important.”

Dean apparently realizes that he’s not gonna get far with Castiel getting all belligerent like that, so he sighs and stops. They are by the door, the light is poor and Castiel has trouble keeping his eyes open. He still tries with all his might to keep them in his friend’s face.

“I didn’t know,” he says. “I realized now, but back then… I didn’t mean to hurt you. I just… I didn’t know. You… you understand, right?”

Dean’s eyebrows shot up in surprise and his mouth opens and closes, as if the words are caught up in his throat all of the sudden. But after the initial shock wears off, Dean manages to smile.

“Yeah. I get it.”

“You’re not mad at me?”

“It was ages ago, Cas,” Dean chuckles. “And I was never really mad at you. You’re my best friend.”

Castiel lets out a sigh of relief and leans forward. Dean catches him in his arms, half hugging him, half preventing him from collapsing on the floor.

“Alright,” he says, patting Castiel on the back. “Let’s get you somewhere you can rest…”

“Hey. Get that shit out of here.”

Castiel doesn’t recognize that voice. It sound way too loud to his sensitive ears and way too aggressive for it to be a mere suggestion. He tries to move away from Dean but the bar is spinning and he has to hold on to his friend to keep his balance.

He still manages to see the person who’s speaking: it’s a man with short grey hair and small eyes. He has a disgusted expression on his face, his mouth twisted and his nose wrinkled as if he had smelled something rotten. He’s flanked by two other men who looked just as disgusted as him. The redness in their faces revealed they had been drinking heavily. Castiel doesn’t like them or the way they’re looking at them, but before he can signal this to Dean, his friend glares back at them.

“You’ve got a problem, pal?”

“Yeah, I’ve got a problem,” the man lashes out. “This is a place for respectable cops.”

“Well, I’m a cop. So that must mean I’m in the right place.”

“People like you ain’t welcome here,” the man insists.

Castiel feels Dean’s muscles tensing, but his friend’s expression remains the same, smiling as if they were having a pretty pleasant conversation.

“I’m sorry, people like me?” he repeats. “I don’t think I know what you mean.”

The three men remain a little taken aback, almost as if they were expecting Dean to just squirrel away without confronting them. Dean continues to smile at them, almost a growl now.

“Go ahead,” he challenges them. “Say it.”

The man opens his mouth to reply…

“Hey!”

From somewhere to their left, Bobby, John and Sam appear. Castiel can’t find his relief. He doesn’t think he’s in condition to fight and Dean is definitely going to need some help if he’s going to go against three men. However, that proves unnecessary.

“You’ve got something to say to my kid, Creaser?” John inquires, stepping between Dean and the other three men. Bobby crosses his arms over his chest and Sam stands by his brother, towering menacingly in his six feet. He’s a lawyer, not a cop, and Castiel doubts he can fight as well as the others, but Creaser and his friends reconsider their odds.

“We know about him,” Creaser replies. “He’s disgracing the uniform.”

“The only one I see disgracing the uniform here is you,” Bobby says, sternly. “Take a walk, son.”

Creaser’s friends step backwards and after a moment, so does he. But not before throwing one last glare in Dean’s direction.

“Let’s go,” Sam says, walking around Dean to grab Castiel’s other arm. “Dean, let’s go.”

Dean remains rooted to his spot for another second, as if he’s thinking about going after Creaser and finish what they started, but in the end, he nods. They leave the bar, Castiel stumbling between the two Winchesters as they made their silent way back to John’s car. They open the door and gently place Castiel in the backseat. He puts his heads between his knees and tries to fight against the sudden wave of nausea that overcame him.

“Better wait,” John groans. “I don’t want him barfing all over Baby.”

“Yeah,” Dean mutters. Out of the corner of his eye, Castiel sees him turning towards his father. “Well, you’re not gonna say it, are you?”

“Say what?”

“You think those guys were right, don’t you? You think I’m disgracing the uniform.”

“Why would you even say that?” John asks.

Castiel dares to lift his head. Dean and John are standing face to face. Sam is nearby, watching them with worry, but Bobby has an arm on his shoulder, warning him this is not something he should interrupt.

“You’ve been acting like this since I told you I was marrying Benny!” Dean replies. “You show up and you can’t even look at me in the eye. It makes me wish you hadn’t come after all.”

“Dean…”

“I’m sorry you’re not proud of me, okay?” he blurts out. “I’m sorry I disappointed you.”

“Dean!” John interrupts him, raising his voice just slightly. “You really think there’s anything at all you can do that would make me stop being proud of you?”

Dean is taken aback. His shoulder slumps and confusion crawls up in his face.

“Well, then, why…?”

“Because I’m terrified!” John confesses. He runs his fingers through his hair and paces around. It takes him some seconds to find his voice again: “Back in the day, I knew a rookie… he was like you, okay? He was… he was gay and he lived with his… with his partner or his boyfriend or whatever you call it. You know what happened to him? He got beat up one night while making his rounds, badly. He never recovered. He spent the rest of his career behind a desk! And he never told anybody who did it, but we all knew. We knew it was some guys from the department. His own people, the people who were supposed to have his back…”

John interrupts himself to get a gulp of air in. Dean stares at him with his jaw hanging open and so does Sam and Castiel. The only one who doesn’t seem surprise at all is Bobby. It’s likely he knew this story already.

“I know times have changed,” John continues after a moment. “I know it’s supposed to be better… but just now? Just now, those guys, they were… and I’m scared, son. Of what they could do to you.”

Dean blinks, perplexed and exchanges a look with Sam, as if he expects his brother to have something to say. Sam is just as stunned as he is, and even Bobby stays in complete silence.

“Dad, dammit,” Dean begins and shakes his head. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

John shrugs. He really doesn’t need to answer to that. Castiel knows that Dean’s inability to admit his feelings definitely didn’t come from his mother’s side and so does every person present in that street.

“Dad, it’s fine,” Dean says, taking a step closer to John. “I know that there are still assholes in the world, but what are you gonna do? You can’t hide from them forever.” He extends his hand and places on John’s shoulder. “But I don’t care about any of them. I care about you. And I didn’t mean it. I want you to be here.”

John smiles slowly as he looks up at Dean and puts a hand on his son’s cheek.

It’s a beautiful moment.

So Castiel feels terrible when he has to interrupt it by doubling over and vomiting all over the pavement.

 

* * *

 

Meg stumbles downstairs way too early in the morning to find Dean sitting on the kitchen’s table, his hands wrapped around a mug of coffee. The two exchange a silent look and she turns her back on him to reach for the coffee maker.

“Benny said you had fun last night, after the dinner,” Dean comments after a few seconds.

Meg has a headache and a mild indigestion and she’s not exactly in the mood for small talk. But after the previous day display, she feels obligated to at least try to feign a little courtesy around Dean.

“Yep, it was alright.” She shrugs. “Your husband can cook.”

“Oh, boy, does he ever.” Dean giggles like a middle school girl with a crush. “He keeps saying I’m marrying him for his gumbo. He’s not entirely wrong.”

“Well, isn’t that nice?” Meg sips from her coffee. It’s strong, black and bitter and just what she needs to keep awake for the next couple of hours until the ceremony is over.

“I also had a good night,” Dean continues. “I found out some things… it was illuminating, actually.”

“That’s great. I don’t really care.”

“Didn’t expect you to. Though some of the things I found are about you, actually.”

“Oh?” Meg crook an eyebrow, interested despite herself. “How’s that?”

Dean fixes his eyes on her, as if he’s debating if he should bring it up or not, but he finally makes up his mind.

“You never told Cas.”

He doesn’t need to clarify what he means.

 

* * *

 

Meg had been calling him Clarence for a year before they finally had a chance to catch the movie.

In September, Meg had been living on Lawrence for a full year, but she no longer thought it was the worst thing ever. Yes, the town was still shitty and boring and she still didn’t get along with her stepbrothers or anyone else at school.

But it was easier with Castiel.

He held her hand when he picked her up at home to go to school. He ate lunch with her. They did their homework together and sometimes they ditched their homework to just make out on the nearest flat surface.

That was pretty standard boyfriend stuff, though. What really made Castiel stood out from all the other boys that Meg had been with was that he seemed to be interested in her as a person. That was so bizarre. He listened to her plans of road tripping the country with eyes wide open and attentive nods. He asked her to come out on Halloween to accompany his younger siblings to trick-or-treat. He patiently answered Azazel’s interrogations during the Thanksgiving dinner. He learned her favorite colors and her favorite music and watched Star Wars with her, even though Dean had convinced him that Star Trek was better (Another of the fundamental differences Meg could never patch up with her stepbrother). He showed her his drawings and confided in her how he wanted to pursue a career in art.

“Why don’t you?”

“My mother would never allow it,” Castiel said. He changed the topic before Meg could protest.

She was aware that things at home weren’t great for him and that he’d had a falling out with Dean, though Castiel didn’t talk much about it. So Meg made the best she could to prove she was worth that. Just like he made that shitty little town worthy for her.

Just like Clarence showed that life was worth it to George Bailey.

They were cozied up in the couch with a blanket wrapped around the two, watching the movie Meg had managed to videotape it from the TV just for this purpose. She shouldn’t have bothered, they were probably going to show it every single day until after New Year. But she wanted him to see it.

By the end of it, Castiel was smiling slightly.

“So… you’ve been calling me an angel all this time,” he teased her.

“Oh, stop looking so pleased with yourself,” Meg replied, throwing a popcorn at his head.

Castiel responded by tickling her and Meg squirmed in his arms until the blanket slid down to the floor and Castiel was caging her with her body. He left a kiss underneath her ear and on the tip of her nose right before he moved to her lips.

That was another thing that had surprised her about Castiel. He had been so shy and so proper at the beginning, but as he had come to realize this was actually happening, they were actually together and Meg wasn’t messing with his head somehow, he had loosened up marvelously. He had a sarcastic sense of humor underneath his stiff exterior and for someone who helped around the church so often, he could come up with ideas so nihilistic that they were hilarious.

He was also really good at kissing. It had taken some practicing for him to grow some confidence, but in the end, Meg’s patience had a wonderful pay off. They were still not doing anything but petting each other over their clothes, but maybe…

The door opened and Dean strode inside. As usual, he made a disgruntled noise upon seeing them.

“There are children in the house,” he complained, pushing Sam so he would walk past them fast.

“He’s thirteen,” Meg pointed out, still with an arm around Cas’ neck. “He knows all about the birds and the bees, don’t you, Sammy?”

Sam hid his laughter by faking a cough. He had been growing steadily during the past few months and now he was almost at the same height as Dean’s shoulder. He had joined the school’s basketball team and Dean had to pick him up after school because both Mary and Azazel were working. Meg had counted on them getting home a little later so she could have some more time with Castiel, but apparently she was out of luck.

“Hi, Cas.”

“Hello, Sam,” Castiel said and then lifted up Meg to sit her on his lap. “Dean.”

Dean didn’t even acknowledge he had been greeted. He just pushed Sam towards the stairs.

“Don’t forget to put your clothes in the laundry basket,” he reminded him and then stalked towards the kitchen.

And suddenly, Castiel’s grip around Meg’s waist wasn’t as tight as before.

“I should go.”

“No, come on,” Meg protested, but he was already gently pushing her away and looking for his shoes. “You don’t have to.”

“It’s getting late,” Castiel said, smiling.

They both knew it was an excuse, but what could Meg really say? Dean’s mere presence in the house made Cas uncomfortable and she couldn’t blame him. Dean had been acting like an ass since school had started again. And right after she kissed Castiel goodbye at the door and closed it behind him, Meg decided it was time someone put Dean in his place.

She found him in the kitchen, going through the fridge because he was a bottomless pit who never stopped eating.

“Did you drink all my juice?” he asked, with a frown.

Meg completely passed up the opportunity to snitch on Sam and crossed her arms over her chest.

“What is your problem?” she snapped at him.

“I can’t find my juice…”

“You know what I mean! What is your problem with Cas?”

Dean turned to look at her for the first time, pure anger in his face, but immediately he shrugged and took the milk carton out of the fridge.

“I don’t have a problem with Cas. Why, does he have a problem with me?” He poured himself some milk, still refusing to face her.

“You know what I mean,” Meg insisted. “You’ve been a jerk to him ever since we started dating.”

“Oh, I’ve been a jerk?” Dean asked, rolling his eyes. “What, like I haven’t found you making out every time I walk in here? It’s like you’re trying to rub it in my face!”

“Why would I want to rub it in your face?” Meg asked, a little baffled at Dean’s complete self-centeredness. “I don’t know how to signal it to you that I don’t give a fuck what you think.”

“Great! You can stop riding my ass, then!”

He attempted to walk around her, but Meg stood in front of him, blocking his way.

“I don’t care, but Cas does,” she added. “Why you got a problem with me dating him?”

“’Cause you’re a bitch. There, happy?”

“No, I’m not happy.” Meg glared at him and Dean almost groan in her face, but she didn’t care. She was settling this, now and for all. “Is it just me or would you still be an asshole if he was dating anyone at all?”

Dean’s face indicated she had hit the nail in the head. He recoiled and glanced away as his cheeks turned into a deep shade of red. Meg stared at him, her anger somehow drowned by the surprise.

“That’s it, isn’t it? You don’t want him to date anyone.”

“Shut up.”

“You’re jealous,” Meg continued. “Because… you like him.”

“I said shut up!” Dean shouted, launching himself forward with such force that the glass of milk slip from his hand and shattered on the floor, spilling its content on their shoes.

They barely noticed. Dean was too busy grabbing Meg by the shoulders and making her look at him.

“If you tell him… if you tell anybody…”

“What? What are you going to do about it, huh?” Meg snapped, grinning at him. “What, are you gonna hit me? Can’t imagine mommy dearest would be happy about it.”

Dean staggered backwards, his hands curling into fists as if he was considering hitting her anyway. But in the end, he almost sprinted past her and fled upstairs.

Meg let him. She also went to pick up the broom and the mop to clean up the mess. When Dean refused to come down for dinner later that evening, she acted as befuddled as the rest of the family. The next morning, Dean was tense and kept glancing at her, as if he was trying to predict what he would do next, but Meg managed to act as if nothing was out of the ordinary. Hoping that things would eventually fall back into place.

 

* * *

 

 

Meg shifts uncomfortable in her spot. She doesn’t know why people keep insisting on poking the past with a stick, but then again, it’s her own damn fault for coming back here, isn’t it?

“Would you’ve preferred I did?”

“No, of course not.” He shudders, as if the very idea makes him uncomfortable. “I just sort of expected you to. I was a jerk to you and you could’ve destroyed me with that information. But you never told Cas. Or anybody.” He taps his fingers on the table. “Guess I’m just wondering why.”

Meg tries to remember if she feel down some rabbit hole or walked into a mirror on the way there, because this doesn’t seem real. The last person she was expecting to have a heartfelt one-on-one chat with was Dean.

“I don’t know. Trust me, you tempted me a couple of times,” she confesses. “But I… I pitied you a little, I suppose. I knew what it was like to be afraid of people knowing the real you. I understood why you hid it.”

She’s not sure that makes any sense, but Dean nods as if it does.

“Yeah,” Dean comments. “I finally get what Cas saw in you. You’re a better person than you let on.”

“Shut up,” Meg replies, rolling her eyes. But she doesn’t add anything else. It’s too embarrassing to confess that she’s been thinking and wondering about Castiel since she got there as well.

Dean smirks and stands up.

“Guess I should thank you.”

Meg blinks at him.

“I’m sorry, what was that?”

“Don’t make me repeat it.” Dean cringes.

“No-uh. If you’re going to thank me, you gotta do it right,” Meg teases him. “Come on, spit out.”

Dean groans and grimaces as if he’s choking on the words, but he finally lets them out:

“Thank you,” he mutters. “Though you’re still a bitch.”

“And you’re still an asshole,” Meg replies, but there’s no venom behind her words.

“Yeah, well, in my list of favorite siblings, you’re still last.”

“You don’t even rank in mine.”

They eye each other from different ends of the kitchen. Meg realizes that, as childish as this is, this is the most honest and agreeable conversation she’s ever had with him.

“So this changes nothing,” Dean concludes.

“Nothing at all,” Meg replies. “However, I might accept your Facebook friend request now.”

“I never sent you one.”

“Well, you better get on that, because Benny already did,” Meg says.

Dean stares at her incredulous and takes out his phone. Meg laughs as it dawns on his face that she isn’t joking with him.

“Oh, that’s just peachy…”

“Can’t wait to see all your honeymoon pics, Dean-o.” Meg chuckles. “Of course, for that, you gotta get married first.”

“Oh, yeah that,” Dean mutters. “What time was that again?”

Mary comes running downstairs, a flutter of a white gown and messy blonde hair.

“We’re going to be late for the ceremony!” she shouts as she starts the stove and fishes the eggs from inside the fridge. “Dean, go wake your brother!”

“I’m the one getting married. Shouldn’t I be exempted from that sort of thing?”

“Now!” Mary orders and shoos Dean away with a wave of her spatula. Meg chuckles, but stops when Mary looks at her over her shoulder.

“I’m… going to go change,” she mutters instead.

“Wash your mug.”

Meg obeys, not because she has to, mind you. Mary is technically no longer her step-mother, but she is the owner of the house and she is handling a hot pan at that very moment.

In any case, it doesn’t take much time for Meg to be ready: she zips up her dark violet dress, gets on her killer heels and applies some quick me up. Sam and Benny are already on the table, devouring the eggs Mary made for them as she urges them on.

“Have you called Liz? Is she up yet?” Mary asks, as she fusses over them and urges them to eat even faster. “You three should go. Dean and I will catch up.”

“Relax, Mary. The whole not seeing the bride before the ceremony thing only applies to straight people.”

Mary doesn’t laugh at Benny’s joke, but continues giving them instructions before she goes upstairs to change herself and to check that Dean is getting ready, presumably.

“No one starts a wedding on the spot,” Meg reminds her, but she gets ignored completely. To have something to do while the boys finish their breakfast, she takes out her cellphone and checks it.

It’s not like she expects it to have any missing calls or emails. Crowley has never been exactly respectful of working hours when it comes to harassing his staff, but if there was a problem with any of her patients, she’s sure they would wait until Monday to let her know. Her social circle has shrunk considerably since her college days and it doesn’t help she’s up in the dead of night while the rest of the world is sleeping. It’ depressing to think she has so few friends that no one has even noticed her absence that weekend.

But then again, it’s not the people she left in Chicago that she’s expecting to hear from.

“He was dead drunk last night.”

Meg looks up from her phone and stares at Sam.

“Castiel, I mean. He was… yeah, he drank way too much.”

“Hopefully, it don’t mean that he’s too hungover to take pictures today,” Benny adds.

“That’s probably why he hasn’t called you.”

“I wasn’t expecting a call from him,” Meg replies. She realizes she spoke too fast and it came out sounding insincere. Sam arches up an eyebrow, clearly skeptical. “Really, Sam. I didn’t even give him my number.”

“Well, sorry for assuming.” Sam shrugs. “You two seem pretty… uh, close the other night.”

Benny’s light blue eyes sparkle with amusement as Meg feels the blood rushing to her cheeks.

“You didn’t tell me you banged our photographer, lil’ sister.”

“Well, what can I say?” Meg says, sticking her chin up because she refuses to be ashamed for a one night stand. “We’ve got history.”

Before Benny can interrogate her further, Mary returns, already wearing a nice black dress, shiny pendants and her hair tied up in a messy bun. She has two hangers in her hand, for tuxedos that look comically oversized, but for men like Sam and Benny, they’re probably just the right size.

“Are you boys done?” she asks, eyeing critically the food still left in their plates. “Okay, you get going and get changed in the church. I’ll drive Dean later.”

Meg argues her heels would make it difficult for her to drive and slips into the backseat, where she has far too much time on her hands to keep thinking.

Castiel used to hate alcohol. He hated it because of the way it had affected his family in general and his father, specifically. He had drunk a little on Friday night, but not to the point that Sam described. Clearly, he’s overcome his issues with it. Meg can’t help but to wonder what else has changed so drastically about him that she’d barely recognize it as one of his traits. And how much has it changed about her that he wouldn’t recognize anymore. Fifteen years were, after all, a very long time.

And why is she thinking about this anyway? It’s not like it matters. She has already told Castiel the other night was a fluke.

Annoyed at herself, she pushes those thoughts away as they park in front of the church. Pastor Jim is already waiting for them and indicates a backroom where Benny and Sam can go change. Meg is left to awkwardly hang around the church and greet people as they arrive. Liz and some people she introduces as Benny’s cousins are the first to arrive, followed closely by Bobby, Ellen, Charlie and Jo. Some cops wearing their gala uniforms, obviously Dean’s friends from work, and a handful of people more she doesn’t recognize, but who greet her so cheerfully she can’t be rude to them.

In the nick of time, John Winchester arrives, looking a bit uncomfortable in his suit, hunched over as if he’s not sure if he wants people to notice his presence or not. He blinks a little befuddled at Meg when she comes over to greet him.

“Oh,” he mutters after a moment. “You’re Azazel’s kid.”

Meg indicates him where the family is meant to be seated and then does everything in her power to avoid that section. The only thing more uncomfortable than having to spend the day around the photographer she banged, as Benny put it, is having to be around her former stepmother’s ex-husband. What is she even supposed to talk about to that guy?

Five minutes later, she’s wishing she had gone to sit with John, because Castiel shows up, awkwardly carrying a tripod with him. He looks a little pale and there are bags around his eyes. His cheeks are covered in stubble, as if he didn’t have time to shave that morning, and his hair is disheveled and messy. His tie is loose and his suit looks a little too baggy for him around the shoulders.

Meg’s first almost uncontrollable impulse is to drag him behind one of the church’s column and have her way with him. What a weird thought to have about a guy who essentially looks like a hobo that wandered in there by mistake. An exceptionally good looking hobo, but still.

She approaches him with caution. After all, their last conversation didn’t go exactly smoothly.

“Hey,” she manages to say.

“Hello,” he replies tersely and then asks where he can install his equipment. That’s the entirety of the exchange they get to have before Mary and Dean burst in through the door.

And then the wedding is underway.

The ceremony goes off without a hitch. She stands with Sam on Dean’s side as he and Benny hold hands and exchange excited looks and radiant smiles. Pastor Jim gives a very moving speech about love and acceptance and family. At least Meg thinks it must be moving, because at the other side of the altar, Liz starts tearing up and Benny’s cousin has to hand her a tissue. Meg’s too distracted thinking she should’ve worn flats for this entire thing and wondering if Dean would be too offended if she simply dropped the bouquet Mary gave her to hold and rip her heels from her feet already.

From time to time, her gaze wonders to the aisle, where Castiel is standing behind his tripod, flashing his camera during different moments of the ceremony and picking it up so he can easily move to a different angle. She tries to catch his eye, but he is far too busy doing his job.

Maybe he can talk to him later that evening. She doesn’t know about what exactly, but she just… feels she must.

“… I now pronounce you husbands for life,” Pastor Jim says, after what feel like hours. “You may kiss.”

Dean cups Benny’s face in his hands and pulls him closer. The entire church erupts in cheers and clapping as Castiel’s camera flashes several times in a row. There’s a little commotion as people move to the door in order to wait for the grooms. Castiel moves through the crowd and some point, he slips away from Meg’s radar completely.

So instead, she focus on smiling and throwing petals at Dean and Benny, who are laughing with eyes bright, full of happiness. When they reach the bottom of the church’s steps, John steps forwards and engulfs Dean in a hug, before turning around and doing the same for Benny.


	7. Chapter 7

The silence in the front seats is pretty damn awkward the entire ride to the reception.

“The ceremony was very beautiful,” Mary comments.

“Yeah. I guess it was,” John replies.

And nothing after that. Sam looks out the window and doesn’t try to keep the conversation going, so Meg does the exact same thing. She has no one to blame but herself for being in that car for no approaching Castiel sooner and asking him how he was getting to the reception.

She can’t explain this sudden urge to speak with him. She keeps thinking about the previous night conversation she had with Benny, about love and how rare it is. She also thinks about the hurt she saw for a fraction of a moment in Castiel’s face when she told him it had only been a one night stand for her.

And she has the impression not everything is said and done.

He’s still busy during the ceremony for her to approach him. There are toasts and speeches about how Dean and Benny are perfect for each other and how everyone hopes they will be happy together while the guests eat their lunches. Then a DJ starts playing song after song and even though Meg isn’t exactly in the mood for dancing, she still stands up along with all the other girls to dance with the grooms and then accepts Sam invitation for another piece. It’s a little awkward: he’s too tall to be really graceful and the dance floor is a little crowded. But they manage.

“Wait, you have to come for the family pictures,” Sam informs her afterwards when she tries to sneak away.

“Really?” Meg wrinkles her nose. “I thought that would be a purely Winchester thing.”

“Don’t be silly. You’re our sister,” Sam insists.

There’s not much arguing Meg can do against that logic. And besides…

“This is not going to take long,” Castiel promises. “We’re going to make one with Dean’s family, one with Benny’s and one with everybody. Gather up, please.”

He’s still being very professional about all of this, asking people to smile, raise their glasses of champagne and, in Dean’s words, making everyone feel a little bit like professional models. Meg stands around and chats a little with Benny’s cousins, but she can’t focus much on their conversation. She’s very glad at least Sam is there to fill in for her awkward pauses and silences. She poses for the two pictures and when Castiel thanks everyone, she makes her way up to him before he can sneak away from her again.

“How are you doing?” she asks him.

Castiel blinks at her a little disconcerted and moves his finger through his hair, as if he’s suddenly self-conscious about his scruffy appearance.

“I’m… I’m okay,” he says. “My dad had a remedy for hungover, it helped a little.”

Meg nods, not entirely sure what to make of that information. A part of her had hoped that Sam wouldn’t be entirely correct in his assessment that Castiel had gone overboard with his drinking, because it just sounded so out of character for him.

Then again, it confirms exactly what she was fearing; but she decides to put that aside for the time being.

“Can we talk? Not right now, I know you’re busy,” she adds. “But after the party, can we talk for a moment?”

Castiel just stares at her, his blue eyes widened by the surprise and Meg fears that he’s going to tell her they have nothing to talk about.

“I’m… I’m taking individual pictures of the guests,” he explains finally, speaking so fast it’s almost like his words come out in a string. “For those who want to sign Dean and Benny’s album. Maybe you can come outside a little later, after they cut the cake. And I can take your picture and we can… talk.”

“Okay.” Meg nods. That is much more than she has any right to expect. “I’ll see you then.”

She tries to walk away casually, she tries not to look over her shoulder. But of course, as she goes back to the party, she betrays herself and looks. Castiel is still standing right where she left him, his blue eyes following her attentively. He manages a smile and Meg smiles back before she saunters into the dance floor. It’s not too long before Benny’s cousin asks her to dance and she accepts gladly. The party suddenly seems a lot cheerier than it was before. After her third glass of champagne, she switches to water and waits patiently for the announcement that it’s time to cut the cake.

Dean and Benny look positively giddy as they grab the knife’s handle together and stop to smile at Castiel’s camera. Benny playfully puts a bit of cream on Dean’s nose and they both laugh out loud with happiness.

“They’re so cute,” Charlie sighs next to Meg. Jo has her arm around her waist and kisses her on the temple, her eyes bright as she looks at her girlfriend. A few tables over, Bobby and Ellen are laughing with Mary and John, who seem a lot less hostile to each other now that they had a few drinks in them.

After that ceremony was over, Meg makes her way around the tables and sneaks two pieces of cake to the garden outside. The sun is setting, making her shadow look long and strange on the floor. She finds a bench and sits down with both the plates on her lap.

She remembers her father and Mary’s wedding. She remembers Castiel following her outside and giving her his handkerchief. His face was red and he was barely able to look at her in the eye when he asked her to dance.

She didn’t know she would fall in love with him then. He was just Dean’s dork of a friend, she had no way of knowing he would mean so much to her. But when their hands had touched and when he’d put an arm around her waist and she had looked into those ocean blue eyes, she had felt a tingle in the pit of her stomach, something she’d ignored in that moment but that she couldn’t stop thinking about later.

She can’t stop thinking about it even now.

She sees his shadow before she sees him. She makes no attempt to stand up and he doesn’t rush as he approaches the bench. He has his camera hanging from around his neck still. She extends one of the pieces of cake towards him and he accepts with a gracious smile.

“Thank you. I was starving a little.”

“Didn’t you get some of the lunch?”

“I barely had time to take a bite of it,” he explains. He sits right next to her, so close their knees are almost touching each other. They eat in silence for a moment, but it’s not awkward and it doesn’t feel rushed. It’s almost like it should have been: a couple of old friends, enjoying the opportunity of seeing each other again, reminiscing about the good old days.

Like it should have been, if Meg hadn’t jumped the gun and made things utterly awkward for the two because she felt lonely and jealous that Dean was so happy and she was so miserable.

And suddenly, she realizes exactly why she needs to talk to him so badly.

“What?” Castiel asks and Meg realizes she has been looking at his face for several seconds without saying a word.

Meg brushes her thumb along the line of his lips to clean a smudge of cream and smirks at his confusion.

“Do you remember the last time we spoke?” she told him. “Before all of this, I mean.”

He smiles, but his eyes look a little dimmer, as if the memory makes him sad. Or maybe is just the dying light around them that makes them look that way.

“You said if we ever met again, you were going to order us pizza and we’d move some furniture around,” he says.

Meg inches closer to him on the bench.

“Sorry I didn’t keep my promise.”

Castiel chuckles a little and tries to alleviate the situation:

“Well, we did… move some furniture…”

“Yes, and it was good,” Meg accepts. “And I know I said we shouldn’t do it again. But I truly think we could’ve done better. I could have been better to you. Especially afterwards.” She places her hand above his knee, slowly, but he makes no attempt to remove it. “I owed you more than just a drunken hook-up.”

His gaze lingers on her face, as if he’s trying to make sure what he’s hearing is exactly what Meg means to say to him.

“You were always… an unfinished chapter in my life,” he confesses. “I always wondered what would happened if we ever did meet again.”

Meg nods. She doesn’t tell him she feels the same way, but then again, she doesn’t really believe she needs to.

“I hope I didn’t ruin it for you.”

Castiel places a hand on her cheek. They’re so dangerously close she can see the chaps on his lips.

“You could never do that.”

She doesn’t know who makes the final move and it really doesn’t seem to matter. It’s like gravity, an unseen force pushing them together every time. The cake falls from her lap when she moves but she can hardly bring herself to care. His mouth tastes like sugar and his fingers are hot in her hair. Meg sucks in the sigh he lets out and holds unto the lapels of his shirt. A part of her wants to get lost in this feeling forever, to take him away right there and to hell with the wedding and the guests and the pictures for the damn album.

But she can’t be that selfish. Being selfish and cowardly is what got her in that mess in the first place.

“The Winchesters are staying a little longer after the party,” she tells him. “At least for a couple of hours, we can have the house for ourselves. If you want… we can go there…”

“You don’t have to do that,” Castiel interrupts her. “You don’t owe it to me. Not at all.”

“No,” Meg agrees. “But I owe it to myself.”

 

* * *

 

 

She’s waiting by his car.

He was bracing himself for disappointment, for her not to be there at all. But there she is, standing perfectly still in her heels, her plum dress looking almost black in the parking lot’s faint light. She’s looking around distractedly, but then she turns her attention back to him and smiles.

Castiel can’t help but to smile back.

There’s not much people left: most guests have already left and the waiters and the kitchen staff are inside, helping Dean and Benny pack up all the alcohol and food that was left. Castiel discreetly asked if he was needing for something else, to which Dean promptly replied they didn’t need pictures of the party’s aftermath. So he slipped out and found her waiting.

His heart is racing as he approaches her. He still isn’t sure what’s going to happen know. He knows what they’ve both said and what they did while they were sitting on that bench, but he’s not sure how that will translate to the two of them being alone in the house now. He doesn’t know if it this will promises of some kind of future or if it’s simply an apology from her, for having dismissed him so quickly.

But she smiles at him and all those doubts and concerns fly out of the window. He’s weak.

“Hello,” he greets her.

“Ready to roll?”

He opens the door for her and walks around the car. By the time he’s sitting behind the wheel, Meg has leaned over, unstrapping her shoes and unceremoniously throwing them on the back seat as he starts the engine.

“Those things are torture devices,” she complains.

“Why do you wear them?”

“Because, have you seen how they make my legs look?” she asks.

Castiel smiles despite himself, because, yes, he has noticed that about Meg. She’s still flirty and snarky, the way she was when they were younger, but she seems much more likely to confront problems head on.

“How’s San Francisco?” she asks him, as she leans against the car’s window. Castiel has the impression she wants to study his face as he answers.

“It’s nice. I like it there,” he tells her. “I’ll be honest, the first few months it was hard to get used to.”

“Small town boy in the big city, huh?” Meg laughs. “I can imagine.”

“I was terrified, I felt alone,” Castiel confesses. “But there was something preventing me from coming back.”

“Let me guess: you didn’t want to admit to dear old Naomi that you were mistaken.”

Castiel chuckles. She knows him all too well and she’s not entirely wrong, but there was something else: the knowledge that there was nothing left for him there in that town. Because she was gone.

He doesn’t say this out loud.

Meg leans over and once again puts a hand over his knee and gives him a friendly squeeze.

“Did you regret it?” she asks. Castiel glances at her for as long as he dares to before turning his attention back to the road. He can’t make out what’s the intention behind that question and Meg tries to lighten up the situation by adding: “Because I distinctly remember your mom screaming that you would.”

“Oh, that.” He forces out another chuckle. “No. I never did.”

 

* * *

 

Meg was always bothering him to let him see his drawings. He was a bit ashamed of them, because they were the source of much conflict in his life: his parents – well, his mother – kept telling him not to waste so much time and energy on them. His older brother Michael agreed with them and Gabriel thought it was hilarious that Castiel considered them so important, which meant he had lost at least two sketchbooks to Gabriel’s pranks. The other kids in school made fun at him because he would rather sit alone in a corner and draw and it had got even worse now that Dean was no longer his friend. So he wasn’t exactly lays showing them off and there were long periods of time when he didn’t draw at all.

But Meg always asked him to see them. And he was happy to show them to her, because she always had something nice to say about them. Castiel knew she wasn’t just saying those things because he was her boyfriend. Meg was always honest about the things she considered important. Brutally honest, in fact: one time she’d told him the sunflower he had drawn looked like a terrifying mouth with extra teeth. Castiel had felt a little offended, but he had to admit she was right.

Meg had a method to reviewing his sketches: she first went through the pages very fast, her eyes taking in quickly what the sketches were supposed to be afterwards, she went through them slowly, pointing out the ones she liked the most and then begging him to let her keep some of them.

“Come on, you’re not gonna miss this one,” she insisted, keeping the sketchbook away from his hand as he tried to fish them back.

He wonders now what she did with them. She couldn’t have possibly kept them all these years, could she?

Castiel pretended he was embarrassed by this request, because he didn’t think they were good enough for her to have them. But deep down he was flattered. He might have quit altogether if he hadn’t known he had Meg’s support. Without Meg, he also would’ve never dared do some other things as well.

“Alright, wait, wait,” he said, as she waved the notebook over her head and laughed. It would’ve been easier to snatch it from her if she hadn’t been standing on the coffee table at the moment. “I have one that you can keep. I drew it for you.”

That surprised her enough to get her to stop.

“Really? Just for me?”

Castiel picked her by the waist and pulled her down. They stumbled on the couch and laughed like idiots as he turned the pages around and looked for it.

“I did my best,” he said, blushing as he ripped the drawing from the notebook and gave it to her.

Meg’s eyes opened wide in surprise. The drawing was of her, wearing a flower pinned to her hair. She was leaning against a tree trunk and glancing away, looking every bit like a nymph of the woods coyly trying to lure some unsuspecting camper into her magic land.

“You drew this from memory?” she asked.

“Of course not. I took a picture of you when you weren’t looking,” he admitted. He still had the Polaroid in his room, but he wanted Meg to have the drawing.

She looked at him with a smirk and batted her eyelash.

“Well, Clarence, a girl could feel offended. Why didn’t you ask me to pose for you like one of your French girls?”

“Uh…” Castiel muttered, but Meg broke into laughter before he could come up with an answer.

“I’m just messing with you.” She climbed unto his lap and put her hands around his neck.

Castiel felt the heat in his gut as she leaned over to kiss him. She’d always had that effect on him: the butterflies in his stomach, the blood rushing to his face. Even now, when they had been going steady for almost a year, he still felt his knees trembling a little when he saw her. Dean used to say that after a while, girls began to bore him. Castiel didn’t think he would ever get bored of Meg.

But there had been something else going for a couple of months now, ever since Valentine’s Day. Castiel had climbed Meg’s window and he had stayed to sleep in her bed. They both knew they would be in immeasurable trouble if they were caught, but they’d had such a beautiful day they just hadn’t wanted it to end with a goodnight kiss in the porch.

That night they had gone further than any other night before. . Meg had been honest with him: she wanted him to be his first and Castiel wanted the same thing. But the both lived in houses with nosy younger siblings and parents who could come home unpredictably. And as pleasant as that Valentine’s Day night had been (Castiel often thought about it when he was having trouble sleeping), he didn’t want it to feel rushed or like they were doing something bad or secretive. He hadn’t gone as far as to suggest they should go to a motel somewhere, but the idea had crossed his mind.

He didn’t want that either, though. Meg deserved something better.

When they broke away to catch their breaths, Meg was giving him that look that meant she was about to ask him out to go up and mess in her bed.

“I got… something else to show you,” he said quickly. He leaned over to pick up his backpack and rummaged through it for a few seconds before he found it.

The envelope was creased from him carrying it around wherever he went. He didn’t trust to leave it at home, where his mother or one of his siblings could find it. He was lucky enough to have intercepted it before anyone else saw it.

Meg stared at the logo of the San Francisco Art Institute, with a little surprise in her face.

“You sent your application there?”

“You told me I should try it,” Castiel said, a little hurt that she didn’t believe that he would be capable to, but all of that disappeared when she took the letter out and quickly read the first few lines.

“You got accepted!” she exclaimed. “Castiel, that’s amazing!”

“It is,” Castiel agreed. He couldn’t help but to crack a smile at Meg’s excitement. “And it’s much more than I could have expected…”

“What’s this tone you’re using?” Meg asked, squinting at him.

“I don’t think I can go, Meg,” he explained, lowering his eyes. “We don’t have that much money to begin with and mom will refuse to even consider paying for it. If I was going to Law School like my brothers, maybe. But this…”

“Hey.” Meg cupped his cheeks with her hands and made him look at her. “Don’t start thinking like that. Do you want to go to San Francisco?”

“More than anything,” Castiel confessed.

“Then you’re going to go,” Meg stated, matter-of-factly. “You’ll figure out a way. I know you will, because you’re the smartest person I know.”

Castiel’s chest warmed up at her words. It wouldn’t be until much later that he realized what her words implied, but in that moment, it just sounded a lot like she was being her usual kind, supporting self.

“I guess… I have nothing to lose by trying,” he said, still a little hesitant.

“That’s the spirit!” Meg congratulated him and left a quick peck on his nose. “San Francisco!”

“San Francisco!” Castiel repeated. It sounded a little like he was saying Paradise: just as idyllic and just as unreachable. But when she looked at him like that, there was nothing impossible to him at all.

He was about to kiss her again when someone cleared his throat on the other end of the living room.

“Seriously, Dean? Do you have to be such a killjoy?” Meg said without even looking up. She snuggled against Castiel’s neck and pulled him even tighter, as if she was signaling her possession of him. Castiel noticed she did whenever they were in the presence of Dean and he wasn’t sure if it was to embarrass him or to annoy Dean. It might have been a combination of the two.

“Yeah… I couldn’t help but to overhear,” Dean said, flat out ignoring Meg’s jab. “You’re… you’re going to San Francisco, Cas?”

“I don’t know,” Castiel admitted. “Perhaps? Things are… a bit confusing at home right now.”

He didn’t want to say that his father had left to “spend a few days” at a “writer’s retirement”. He didn’t want to say how his mother had been quietly tense during all those days and how Samandriel and Hael kept asking when their father would be back. He didn’t want to say that maybe Naomi had finally got tired of his antics and kicked him out for good. As always, she didn’t think it was necessary to communicate such a monumental change on their lives to them. Castiel was almost tempted not to communicate to her what was going to be his college of choice, but even with how angry he was, he still wasn’t as petty as that.

He also wasn’t petty enough to remain where he wasn’t wanted. So as it was usual whenever Dean showed up, he decided to take his leave. He kissed Meg on the way out and jumped down the porch’s steps, his backpack bouncing against his leg. He stopped for a moment to breathe in the warm air, getting warmer every day. He had taken only two steps towards the fence when the door opened again behind him.

“Cas!”

He turned around, a little surprised. Had he forgotten something inside? Why wasn’t Meg coming to give it to him? Why was Dean walking up to him instead? He stared at his best friend, a little apprehensive, but when he was right in front of him, Dean didn’t shout at him. He simply cleared his throat again, as if he had something big and uncomfortable stuck in it. Castiel almost wanted to ask him if he needed a mint, but Dean was looking at his shoes, and well… Castiel knew him. He knew Dean was bad at this and a joke like that would’ve completely derailed whatever conversation they were about to have.

So he stood in silence waiting for Dean to gather his courage. Finally, his friend looked up and offered him a forced smile.

“I’ve… I’ve been an ass.”

He made a long pause.

“Do you expect me to contradict that?” Castiel asked, frowning. “Because…”

“No, of course not,” Dean groaned. He rubbed the back of his neck, awkwardly. “Dammit, Cas. Don’t make it harder.”

Castiel had no intentions of doing so, but he didn’t want to make it easier either. After months of Dean only talking to him in angry, curt sentences, after him making Castiel feel guilty for something that wasn’t wrong at all, he expected this to be good.

Dean took a deep breath and said:

“You’re leaving. I mean, after the summer…”

“Yes,” Castiel confirmed.

And it suddenly hit him why Dean wanted to apologize now. He still didn’t know if he would go to San Francisco or to one of the respectable schools his mother wanted him to go to. Either way, he wasn’t going to stay in that town much longer. He didn’t know if Dean had applied for any colleges or if he would take a job at his godfather’s scrapyard full time, but in any case, it seemed like they were about to go their separate ways.

The enormity of that realization hit him like a ton of bricks. In just a few short weeks, he wouldn’t be a high school student anymore. In September, graduation day seemed like a million years away and now…

“It’s not like we’re never going to see each other again,” Castiel tried to say, desperate to grasp at any semblance that everything wasn’t about to change. “I’ll come back for the holidays and…”

Dean shook his head.

“Nah, man. It won’t be the same.”

He said like it was final. Like this was the last chance to speak to him honestly that he would get. He looked up and offered Castiel his hand.

“I’m sorry.”

He didn’t need to say for what and Castiel didn’t take his hand. Instead, he stepped forwards and hugged his friend, long enough to make Dean uncomfortable, but still too short in Castiel’s opinion. Yet, when he stepped back, Dean patted him in the back and nodded.

“You know, it doesn’t matter if your mom freaks out on you,” he said. “You gotta do what you gotta do, man.”

Castiel never told him how much he appreciated those words and that apology. If Dean could swallow his pride, then Castiel could find the courage in himself to take destiny into his own hands. Both Dean and Meg believed in him and that trumped any fear and confusion he still might have.

 

* * *

 

The house is eerily silent when they arrive. There’s no one there but they still tiptoe inside as if they’re going to disturb someone. Meg carries her shoes in one hand and her purse tightly clutched in the other. Castiel takes that as a good sign. After they close the door behind them, they stand in the middle of the living room, a little dumbfounded, as if they can’t believe they had actually gotten this far again. There’s a nervousness that wasn’t there last time, nor… nor the first time, either.

Meg puts her shoes down and straightens her shoulders. It looks like she has made a very sudden decision.

“Do you want a drink?” she offers, turning around. “I’m sure Mary has some beers in the fridge…”

Castiel grabs her by the wrist and pulls her closer. He has also made a decision and he needs to follow through before his courage wanes again.

Meg answer to his kiss with the same urgency he feels. Her hands on the back of his head are eager and her tongue against his sends a shiver down his spine. They really don’t need to say any more than they’d already had and everything else can wait until afterwards. She smirks when they’re done and squeezes his hand before turning towards the stairs.

She was also wearing a dress the last time, Castiel remembers. She always hated dresses but she’d agreed to wear one for the prom dance. It was blue, not violet like this one, and it fell all the way to her ankles. She looked just as lovely as she does now, as she turns on her lamp and starts pulling the pins that held her hair in place and lets it fall over her shoulders.

“Close the door.”

Castiel does and kicks off his shoes right afterwards. Meg waits for him standing in the middle of the room, her arms outstretched to receive another kiss from him. His fingers fumble down her back until he finds the dress’ zipper and then, once again, he hesitates. He wants this more than he could probably tell, but he doesn’t want to rush it.

But then Meg’s lips latch onto his neck, sucking ever so gently, and suddenly he forgets all of his good intentions. The dress falls down carelessly to the floor followed by immediately his slacks and his shirt. Meg turns them around and pushes him down on the bed before she leans over to pick up her clutch purse. Castiel almost has to laugh when he sees what she fishes out from it.

“You thought this one through, didn’t you?”

“A girl has to be prepared.” She shrugs and kneels between his legs.

Castiel helps her remove his boxers and feels the blood rushing to his neck and his cheeks. It’s perhaps the first time in years he’s completely naked in front of a woman and it’s almost all too fitting that woman happens to be her. He feels strangely vulnerable, even more so when Meg stretches her hand and gives his cock a gentle stroke. Castiel shudders from the pleasure and tries to find something to say, but Meg’s eyes catch his and his mouth goes dry. They look black in the dimly-lit room.

“You’re not the only one who learned some tricks, you know?”

She leans over and takes his erection into her mouth. Castiel throws his head back and moans. He barely realizes he’s holding unto Meg’s soft hair, tangling his fingers in her locks, as the bliss from what she’s doing to him floods his mind.  His heart pounds against his ribcage as if it’s about to jump out of his chest. Meg seems to know exactly what she’s doing, because when he dares to look back again, he sees her smirking almost devilishly. And as wonderful as this is, Castiel feels compelled to grab her by the shoulder and gently push her away.

Meg arches an eyebrow at him, interrogative.

“I… I want you to…” He gasps for air and starts again: “I want you to enjoy yourself too.”

“Who says I’m not?” she replies, but she knows what he means exactly. She rips the wrapper and slides the condom down his shaft with ease. It seems she, too, is more than eager the get to this.

When she stands in front of him, Castiel takes a moment once again to just observe her and one again he’s taken aback by how beautiful he finds her, how much he enjoys her teasing. She takes her time. She unclasps her black bra and slowly slides down the straps down her arm before doing away with her panties as well. Castiel opens his arms to her and she delicately sits on his lap, not quite exactly where Castiel wants her. Instead, she kisses him firmly, possessively and moans into his mouth when he lowers a hand and finds her pussy, wet and warm and ready for him.

“Is this how you imagined it?” she asks with a cheeky smile. “All those years you dreamt about finding me?”

“No,” he mutters and can’t help but smile at the slight surprise in her face. “It’s much better.”

He puts his hands on both sides of her hips to keep her steady as she lowers down on his dick. He sinks into her warm and hides his face in her neck, tasting the salt in her skin. They stay where they are, just embracing each other, just getting used to each other’s bodies coming together like two pieces of a puzzle. Then, Meg begins to move.

She’s slow at first, lifting herself just a little before dropping back down, making sure he feels every inch of himself going into her and lingering for a few seconds before she starts again. Castiel groans his impatience but she shuts him with another kiss, He can feel her agitated breathing, the way she’s shaking, craving the same release at him. But for some reason now she’s not rushing this up and he doesn’t want to ruin it. So he sticks to her maddeningly lazy rhythm, kissing every part of her that he can reach with his mouth: her lips, her collarbone, her shoulders.

It isn’t until he moves down and plants his face on her breasts that Meg lets out a loud cry and begins to accelerate her movements. Now she’s crashing into him a lot harder, with a lot more desperation, as Castiel caresses her thighs and continues to suck on her nipples.

Her grip on his shoulder feels like iron as she pushes him back. Castiel barely manages to plant his hands on the mattress, surprised by the sudden change, but he’s not complaining. He can see Meg’s chest rising and falling, her lips parted with every breath she takes, the marks of his kisses and hickies on her neck, her hair damp with sweat falling on her shoulders…

It’s almost too much to take.

“Meg…” he mutters.

She pushes into him one last time and clenches her pussy around him. The sensation sends him spiraling down, his orgasm overwhelming everything else. His arms tremble and fail and he collapses on the bed, trying to catch his breath. He hears Meg moaning one last time before she falls by his side.

They stay in complete silence for a long while. Castiel is still trying to collect his thoughts when he hears her laughing out loud.

“That was beautiful, Clarence.”


	8. Chapter 8

She laughed the same way and said the same words the night he announced to his mother that he was going to the San Francisco Art Institute instead of Dartmouth. It was the first and also the last time that he invited Meg over at his house. His father had still not returned from his “writers’ retreat” and Castiel had thought perhaps he should wait until the house had settled down from that shake up before starting another one. But with graduation day around the corner, he couldn’t keep postponing it.

It started like a casual mention of the topic and ended with Meg and Castiel fleeing the house through the backdoor as Naomi shouted at them in their wake:

“You’re going to regret this, Castiel! You’re going to regret this for the rest of your life!”

They ran through the backwoods without looking over their shoulders and Meg laughed and laughed until her face was completely red. She was still chuckling by the time they arrived to their spot by the fallen tree, though Castiel still failed to see the humor in the situation.

“We shouldn’t stay out here too long,” he commented, with a sigh. “My mother will probably call Mrs. Winchester and she will tell your dad…”

Meg grabbed him by the jacket and pulled him down for a kiss.

“That was beautiful, Clarence!”

Castiel sighed, not sure he would classify what just happened as possible. Naomi would still be furious when he returned home and there would be so much more “talking”, which would actually be more like screaming and her trying to convince him not to throw his life down the drain.

But he still had a little pride burning in his chest. He confronted his mother, he told her exactly what he was planning to do and he’d stood his ground even when she had started losing her cool. He did feel like he’d done something monumental that night and he was glad at least Meg recognized it. So he tried to forget what was waiting for him when he returned home and he just kissed Meg right back against the trunk of one of the trees. The rumor of the water running behind them and the bright stars on his head gave the air a false sense of pure peace. Almost as if he hadn’t just unleashed chaos in his life.

Almost as if there was no more chaos about to come.

“And you know… I don’t think your mom liked me very much,” she giggled.

Castiel shook his head, slightly amused at her pointing out the obvious.

“Well, it doesn’t matter,” he said, running his finger through her hair. “I’ll guess she’ll have to get used to the idea of us living together.”

Meg burst into laughter once more, but this time is different. A moment ago, she was laughing out of nervousness, to let go of the tension they had just gone through. But now she sounds amused, as if Castiel had just told a very funny joke.

He couldn’t figure out the meaning of it until she stopped. The laugh froze in her throat as her eyes scanned her face.

“Oh,” she mumbled, her smile disappearing. “Oh, shit. You’re serious.”

“Why wouldn’t I be serious?”

Meg took a step backwards, escaping from his arms. Her eyes were wide open and she looked like she was about to start running again, this time away from him. Castiel still couldn’t understand the reason; or maybe he could, but he was just refusing to because deep down he knew it would break his heart.

“Meg,” he called her, resisting the urge to go to her and hug her again. “You’re coming with me, aren’t you? To San Francisco?”

“Are you asking me to or are you just assuming I will?”

Her tone was tense. Castiel knew it well enough to know that mean the situation was volatile. If he did or said the wrong thing, another fight would break out and he didn’t want to fight. Not with Meg, of all people.

So he replied to Meg’s question with another, more pressing one:

“Why wouldn’t you want to come with me?”

Meg let out something midway between a huff and an incredulous laugh, as if she couldn’t quite believe that Castiel was asking this.

“I’m not going with you because… I’m not,” she said. That wasn’t explanation enough and they both knew it. Meg raised her hands and paced around the clearing for a moment, as if to organize her thoughts. “Look, Clarence. Cas. I’m happy for you. I am. I think it’s great that you’re going to do something you love, but… I never said I was going to go with you.”

That was a fair point and it was entirely true, but Castiel still refused to accept it. Too many had changed since those first days at the end of the summer when Meg had been projecting her long road trip across the country and he had thought… he had assumed she was entirely serious about this relationship. Like he was.

He was still refusing to accept he might have been wrong about that.

“Alright, well… I’m asking you to now. Come with me,” he said, as if that would make Meg’s answer change. “I know you don’t want to go to college or anything like it, but you can find something else to do. You can find a job or…”

“Just take care of the house, cook and clean for you while you go out and forge yourself a name as a famous artists?” Meg’s snicker this time was cruel. Castiel felt it like a shot straight to his heart. “I don’t think so.”

“I would never ask that of you,” Castiel replied. He was starting to feel his anger rising. Didn’t Meg know him better than that? Didn’t she want this relationship to continue? “But what are you going to do?”

Meg avoided his eyes for a second, before slowly turning back with a bitter smile and shrugging.

“I don’t know,” she answered. That was a thing that Castiel would never stop admiring of her: her honesty, even when she was fully aware others would never understand it. “I haven’t found out yet. That’s what the whole going on a trip is about, isn’t it? Getting to know yourself.”

“Well, can’t you get to know yourself in San Francisco?” Castiel asked. His frustration must have reflected in his voice, because Meg huffed at him and put a hand on her hip, unequivocal sign that she was about to lose her already scarce patience.

“What do you want me to say? Why do you even want me to go with you in the first place?”

“Because I love you!” Castiel screamed.

It was the first time he said it out loud. He had known for a while, he had been sure of it for so long… but he had never dared to say it so explicitly. It wasn’t a good thing that it had come out so angry, so demanding, but he only realized that many years and many failed relationships later.

“I love you and I want this continue,” he kept saying. “I want us to have a future, together, someday, but that can’t happen if you’re away God knows where. Please, just come with me. I don’t want to lose you.”

Meg’s eyes and mouth were open as she watched him ramble. When he stop to take a breath, she shook her head.

“Holy shit, Cas. We’re barely eighteen,” she reminded him. “Your mom more or less just kicked you out of the house. You’re not even sure you can afford your degree without putting yourself in debt. What the hell kind of future are you talking about?”

Castiel had to admit she had a point there. He hadn’t thought it through. He was so sure she was going to come with him, no questions asked, because the only future he could imagine for himself was one where she was included. He couldn’t adjust to this new idea that things might not turned out quite as he wanted them to.

“I don’t know,” he confessed, taking a step towards her and stretching his arms. “I don’t know yet. You said you wanted to figure yourself out and I get that. But why can’t we do that together?”

Meg didn’t say a word. She didn’t try to reach for the hand he was extending to her, she just kept looking at him with her brown eyes growing glassy with unshed tears. She never cried. Castiel wished she had then, because then he would’ve known that this hurt her as much as it hurt him.

Perhaps he wouldn’t have been so selfish to think he was the only one suffering there.

He let his arms fall at the sides of his bodies.

“So… this was your plan all along?” he asked. “Once school is over, so are we.”

“I’m sorry, Cas.”

“When were you planning to tell me?”

“I did tell you,” she argued stubbornly.

“I thought…” Castiel started, but then he realized what he had believed would make no difference at all. Meg had said what she needed to say and if she said it again, he wasn’t sure he would be able to bear it without screaming and crying and begging her. That would only make her despise him. So he just hid his eyes in his hand for a moment, trying to hold back his tears and turned his back on her. “I… I need to be alone.”

“Okay,” she mumbled.

Her steps made no sound as she walked away. She had already disappeared among the woods by the time Castiel collected himself enough to look at her direction. He recriminated himself for letting him walk home alone and at the same time, he was furious that she would leave just like that, that she wouldn’t stay to try and fix this.

It wasn’t until much later he realizes she had interpreted his words as a request for her to leave, because he couldn’t go back home just yet. Even when she broke his heart, she was still trying to protect him.

 

* * *

 

Castiel opens his eyes when he hears the bedroom’s door opening. Meg had left to throw away the condom and he had closed his eyes for a moment, only for his mind to be flooded with memories he couldn’t avoid. He watches her in silence as she tiptoes inside, wrapped in nothing but his white shirt. She stops long enough to turn off the night lamp before she takes them off and slides under the sheets with him with a sigh. Castiel immediately puts an arm around her waist and pulls her close. His eyes take a second to get used to the dark, but he’s almost certain that she’s grinning.

“Well, that was fun,” she comments, with a giggle. “You got better.”

“Thank you. You weren’t so bad yourself.”

He’s rewarded with a happy laugh and he smiles as well. He extends his other hand and Meg immediately rests her had in his bicep. The heat her body radiates is more than enough to keep him warm in the night, yet they both cocoon under the blankets as if they need a little more. Castiel suspects is because they want to stay close to each other.

A peaceful silence falls between the two and he wishes he could revel in it, he wishes he could close his eyes and fall asleep. But there’s still too many words that need to be said before any of them can get some rest.

As usual, Meg doesn’t hesitate in taking the first step.

“So… what happens now?”

“I don’t know,” he admits. “I was hoping you would tell me.”

Meg sighs and snuggle closer to him. It’s obvious she doesn’t want to have this conversation, but they both know it’s inevitable.

“Okay, fine,” she groans. “I didn’t go with you because I wasn’t ready. I was a kid and what you were proposing sounded a lot like growing up. So I freaked out…”

“I know that,” he interrupts her.

Meg shifts next to him, perplexed.

“You told me as much yourself back then,” Castiel continues. “I didn’t listen to you because I was certain I was ready for everything that life could throw at me. It was selfish of me to assume you would choose me instead of yourself and it was arrogant to presume that since I was ready, so should you. I never got to apologize to you for that.”

“That’s… incredibly insightful,” she comments.

Castiel runs his fingers through her hair and catches a lock between them, pensively twisting it as he tries to decide what his next words will be.

“It took me longer than I’d like to admit to,” he confesses. “I was angry at you for the longest of times. But I do understand now and I don’t blame you for it.”

“But you said you had questions.”

He smiles sadly to himself. He never thought he would have this opportunity, but Meg is letting herself open, she’s offering to give him the answers he’s been wondering about for years. And now that he has them within his reach, he’s not sure he wants to know. He’s not sure if it will make things better or worse.

But he knows he will regret it if he lets it get away. He knows he will not be able to live with himself if he doesn’t find out the truth.

“Did you love me?” he whispers. “Back then. I told you I loved you. You never said it back.”

Meg sighs deeply and remains silent for the longest of time. Castiel is sure she wasn’t expecting to have to answer that.

“Dammit, Clarence, I thought it was obvious,” she mutters in the end. Castiel doesn’t reply. He needs to hear it. She takes in a deep, shuddering breath: “Yes. I did love you.”

Castiel closes his eyes. That’s all he needs to know, but now that the floodgates are open, Meg also has something to say to him.

“You said you didn’t regret it. I did. I regretted not coming with you,” she admits. “I regretted it because you were right. We could’ve grown up together, we could’ve figured it out. I didn’t have to do it all by myself and there were times I really needed you there… but I was so stupidly proud.”

“You weren’t,” Castiel insists. He doesn’t blame her for breaking his heart anymore, so she shouldn’t either.

Meg shakes her head. She’s not done speaking.

“The truth is, I have never loved anyone the way I loved you. I mean, some guys couldn’t even measure up to you… but there were others who were nice and I still couldn’t bring myself to love them. This weekend, all this talk about love and finding the one and shit, it made me think maybe you were it. Maybe I screwed it up forever by walking away from you.”

She stops abruptly, as if she’s said too much and now she’s afraid of how he will reply. Castiel is thankful though. He’s thankful to know her honesty hasn’t changed, he’s thankful to know he isn’t the only one who’s thought of this.

“The same thing happened to me. Perfectly good relationships… but they weren’t you.”

“God, aren’t we a pair of sentimental morons?” she laughs.

He squeezes her tight against his chest and breathes in her scent. She has the bittersweet smell of sweat and sex clinging to her, with just the faintest hint of the perfume she put on that morning. He wants to fix this in his memory, in case what he asks next ruins everything.

“And now?”

“I don’t know.” Meg sighs and her hot breath tingles his skin. “I really don’t know, Cas. You’re different. I know I’m different. So what if we’re still in love with versions of us that don’t exist anymore?”

That is a perfectly valid point and Castiel has no answer to it except to keep petting her hair. She hides her face in his neck, her arm tight around his waist. As if she’s not planning on letting him go ever again.

“This is a real downer of a pillow talk, huh?”

“I’m glad we had it.”

And he’s truthful. As uncertain as everything seems right now… they put the past to rest. The importance of that can’t be overstated.

The door opens downstairs and Dean’s drunken laugh floats towards them, followed by shushes and steps on the hall. Meg doesn’t try to move from his arms or tells him to go away, but reality is setting in once again.

“My flight leaves at noon tomorrow,” she informs him.

“Alright,” he says. “You should sleep.”

He keeps touching her hair, listening to the house agitation as the Winchesters (Benny is a Winchester now, he supposes) find their way to their bedrooms and settle in. After a while of not moving, Meg lifts up her face at him.

“You should sleep too.”

“I don’t want to.” He can barely distinguish her face in the dark, but he knows she must be arching up an eyebrow at him. “I don’t want to wake up and find you’re gone.”

Meg leaves a soft kiss on the edge of his lips.

“You won’t,” she promises. “I’ll be here in the morning.”

 

* * *

 

He didn’t take it well. He handled it even worse.

Meg had been the first girl he ever fell in love with, genuinely fell in love with it. She was also the first to break his heart. He didn’t handle it well at all.

Hannah knocked on his room’s door several times in the days after he and Meg had their fight.

“It’s her again,” she informed her. “What do you want me to tell her?”

“I can’t go to the phone, Hannah,” he told her over and over.

Inevitably, Hannah would fail to point out he wasn’t doing anything except sulk in his room and she did as she was asked, bless her. After three days, Meg stopped calling.

That didn’t make it any less awkward. He still had to see her at school. Luckily final exams and prom preparations kept them apart, or maybe Meg avoided him because she thought he didn’t want to talk to her. It hurt every time he turned a corner and caught a glimpse of the back of her head or every time he caught her glancing in his direction in the classes they had together, only for her to pick up her things and squirrel away as soon as the bell rang.

It hurt and he had no one to talk about it. His mother was still giving him the cold shoulder after the great college debacle, barely recognizing his presence in the house by putting a plate of food in front of him at dinner and not much else. Hannah, of course, knew that something had happened and as well-intentioned as her advices were, they tended to sound as something she would read in her fashion magazines.

“Sometimes it’s good for a couple to give each other space,” she kept insisting. “You and Meg are going through some stuff right now and it’s better if you…”

“Hannah, you haven’t even kissed anyone!” Samandriel pointed out from the couch where he was playing videogames.

Hannah left an offended gasp, but at least she went quiet and let Castiel to his sulking on the table, with the books open in front of him so he could pretend he was studying.

So the only person he could talk about it was Dean and that was… also not ideal.

“Told you she was gonna chew you up and spit you out, buddy,” he said when he found about him and Meg having a fight. They were in their spot by the creak sitting on the fallen tree, once again theirs alone. “Guess that explains why she’s been weird.”

“She’s been weird?” Castiel asked, suddenly very interested in what Dean had to say about this. “How?”

“Just… weird, you know. Weirder than usual.” Dean shrugged and took a long gulp out of his can. “She’s like… not bickering or anything. Her dad’s still trying to talk her out of her stupid road trip, but she’s making plans and she’s gonna buy a car from Bobby and whatnot. So she’s really going to do that.”

“Oh.”

Castiel hugged his knees to his chest and looks away. He didn’t know why this information surprised him. Meg had made it very clear the last time they spoke that she had no intentions to change her plans for him. Why should she now that they weren’t together anymore?

Were they? They never really said the words. They never talked about it and maybe that was what Meg had wanted to discuss when she called him all those times. He had completely ignored her and….

Dean flickered his shoulder.

“You’re thinking too hard, Cas,” he told him, nonchalantly. “It doesn’t even matter anymore, you know? Just forget it. Chicks come and go, but you know what you’ll always have?”

“What’s that?”

“Me!” Dean raised his can of beer and laughed. “I’ll always be here for you, buddy.”

Castiel tried to force out a smile. He wasn’t sure he succeeded.

“Yes. Thank you, Dean.” He made a reflective pause and then pointed at the can. “May I?”

Dean stared at him, surprised, but then he shrugged and handed him the can. Castiel tilted it up against his lips and took a sip. The beer tasted bitter on his tongue and burned down his throat. He almost dropped the can in his hurry for putting it down. He coughed and coughed for several minutes while Dean patted him in the back.

“There you go, okay,” he muttered. “Party on, Cas.”

“Thanks.” He cleared his throat once more. “I guess this means we’re not going to the prom.”

“Of course we’re going to the prom. Are you kidding me?” Dean laughed. “We may get lucky and find some girls whose date stood them up. We can’t pass up the chance.”

Castiel didn’t tell him he didn’t think he could see another girl, not right now. He appreciated Dean’s intentions nonetheless.

The sun was sinking by the time he headed back home, making the sky take on a melancholic violet hue. The cicadas sang in the distance and the streetlights were lighting up one by one. There were no cars on the street. It was just another uneventful spring evening in the suburbs of his small town.

His father had returned home.

Castiel halted by the garden’s face, taken aback by the presence sitting in the porch’s steps. Chuck looked strange. He realized maybe it was because his clothes weren’t creased and because there weren’t dark circles under his eyes. He looked tired, but not the kind of tiredness that comes from drinking too much or for having to deal with a hungover. Just the kind of tired one gets from making a long journey. When he stood up, his feet didn’t sway and when he spoke, his words weren’t slurry.

“Hello, son.”

Castiel didn’t know what to say to that. He disappeared for almost two months and then all he had to say was “Hello”?

He never did know what to expect from his father.

He crossed the yard and let Chuck awkwardly put his arms around him and pull him in for a hug.

“Sit down with me,” he insisted, even though Castiel had given no indication he wanted to do that. “Let’s talk.”

“Very well.” Castiel sat by his side on the steps and made no questions. He suspected the “writer’s retreat” hadn’t been such, but he didn’t expect to get a direct answer if he asked about it. Chuck didn’t seem interest to talk about it either. Instead, he wanted to talk about Castiel.

“So your mother tells me you’ve been accepted into some art school in San Francisco, right?”

“Not this again,” Castiel sighed. “Look, I don’t know what mom told you to tell me, but I’m going there. I’ve made up my mind.”

Chuck’s immediate answer was to nod. Which was odd, but appreciated.

“Okay,” he said. “If you’re sure…”

“I’m sure.”

“Then that’s that,” Chuck concluded and patted Castiel in the back, as if there was nothing more that needed to be said. “Come inside. Dinner must be ready.”

It wouldn’t be until years later that Castiel found out that the “writer’s retreat” was actually a clinic for alcoholics and addicts. Naomi had given Chuck an ultimatum: he checked himself in there and came home sober, or he didn’t come home at all.

Castiel supposes that was a good thing. It was too late for him and his older brothers to have an actual relationship with his father. They had seen him dead drunk too many times for it, but Hannah, Samandriel and Hael still managed to salvage it. Of course, Chuck and Naomi’s marriage survived the whole ordeal. When someone asked Castiel whether he believed a love like that was possible, he always thought that his parents had stayed together despite all the ugliness.

That wasn’t insignificant.

 

* * *

 

His cellphone ringtone pierces his peaceful morning slumber. Meg’s body is a sweet weight on his arm, but she groans and rolls away when she hears it.

“Pick up, will you?” she groans.

Castiel allows himself a second to imagine this is how it should be. Them waking up side by side naked, tangled in the sheets and each other’s arms. He manages to take a peek of her sleepy face and her messy hair before he stands up and pats around the floor until he finds his pants and finds his cellphone, miraculously still charged, in one of his pockets.

“Hey, son,” Chuck’s voice speaks on the other end. “I’m just… calling to check in on you. Hannah came back early and she said you were still dealing with some wedding stuff and your mom was worried because it was getting late. I told her not to, that you were probably somewhere with your friends or with that girl… and uh, well, now she’s threatening to call the police, so…”

“I’m fine,” Castiel replies, trying to bite back a smile imagining his mother’s reaction. At the same time, he feels a little guilty. He came home for the first time in years and he has done everything in his power to spend as little time there as possible. The first night he slept with Meg and the second Dean and Sam had to drag him inside while he kept apologizing to Dean for vomiting in his car’s wheels, so Naomi is not completely off the mark to think Castiel hasn’t exactly been on his best behavior.

“I told her you probably would be,” Chuck replies. “So, uh… are you getting home soon? Because Hannah says you should leave early…”

“Yes.” Castiel turns around and looks at Meg’s form bundled underneath the sheets. She has her eyes close, but her breathing is not deep enough for him to believe she’s actually sleep. “I, uh… let me get back to you on that.”

The second he puts the phone aside and sits down on the bed, Meg opens her eyes and looks at him.

“Do you have to go?” she asks. She sounds anxious.

“Can I drive you to the airport?”

She arches an eyebrow up in surprise and sits up. For a moment, it seems like she’s trying to find out for a reason to tell him no and he’s about to add that it’s not necessary when she nods.

“Sure, why not? It’ll save me up the taxi’s money.”

They smile at each other and when Castiel hesitates to kiss her, she leans over, puts a hand on the back of his neck and pulls him towards her.

“I’m gonna hit the shower,” she decides, standing up. “And you better get dressed, too. Mary has strict ideas about pants and breakfast.”

If he ignores the tug of sadness in his chest, the morning couldn’t be brighter. He’s greeted by clapping and cheering the moment he sets a foot in the kitchen.

“Wearing the same clothes as yesterday?” Dean teases him. “Cas, you slut.”

Benny elbows him in the ribs and they both laugh while Sam shakes his head at them. Mary, standing in front of the stove, reminds them to behave.

“Do you want eggs, Cas?”

“Thank you, that would be lovely,” he says, checking his clock. It’s almost eight thirty. “Maybe we should wait for Meg…”

“Meg is here,” she announces, barging in.

She’s donning jeans and a simple purple blouse and she looks a lot more like the girl Castiel knew. Dean and Benny cheer at her too and she rolls her eyes as she sits next to Castiel. The table is already small, but with men as burly as the Winchesters occupying most of it, they have to scoot very close to each other to fit, or maybe Meg just wants an excuse to brush her leg against his.

“Congratulations on the sex!” Dean tells them.

“Oh, like you didn’t,” Meg replies, because Castiel is too busy blushing to come up with a reply.

“No, actually, we were too smashed,” Benny replies. “But there’ll be plenty of time for that on the cruise.”

“I’m so curious. What kind of bathing suits do you use?” Meg plants her elbow on the table and leans her chin on her palm. “I mean, I figured Dean is a thong kind of guy and that’s a mental image right there.”

“I’m not wearing a thong,” Dean protests, his neck turning a deep shade of red. “You shut up,” he adds as Benny chuckles in his coffee.

“Behave, boys,” Mary admonishes them as she piles food and more food in front of them.

The breakfast is full of jokes and memories from the night before, from the tripping waitress that dropped several dollars’ worth of champagne to Benny’s cousin drunkenly trying to dance the Macarena. Sam refuses to answer if he got the number from one of the kitchen staff girls and at nine, Mary reminds them that Meg needs to get going. No one seems too surprised when they discover that Castiel offered to drive her there.

“Have a nice flight, dear,” Mary says, patting her on the cheek. “And don’t be a stranger.”

Meg only smiles and nods at that comment. Just when she’s about to walk around the car to get on the passenger seat, Benny grabs her by the arm and pulls her in for a bear hug.

“Come on, lil’ sis. Don’t tell me you were going to leave like that.”

“Not a big fan of hugs, to tell you the truth,” Meg protests but hugs him back.

Dean shoots a confused glance at his husband before he also steps closer to Meg. He sways on his feet a little, as if he’s not sure if he should really go in for a hug, so ultimately Meg saves him from his dilemma by offering her his hand.

“Nice party, Winchester,” she congratulates him.

“Yeah, well.” Dean scratches the back of his neck. “I was only planning on doing that once, so…”

Benny kisses him on the cheek approvingly. Sam and Meg bumps fist and promise to be in touch. Castiel isn’t sure either of them intends to keep that promise. He opens the door for Meg and she slides inside with sigh. She’s looking outside the window when he sits behind the wheel and gives her step-family a half-hearted wave as he starts the engine. She relaxes against the seat, but as they leave the neighborhood behind she opens her eyes wide and jumps, cursing under her breath. Castiel almost pumps the break at that.

“What is it? Did you forget something?”

“Yes. I didn’t have time to visit him,” Meg groans.

Castiel is disconcerted for a second and then realizes her father must be buried in the local cemetery.

“Oh. Well… I’m sure he won’t mind,” he says, awkwardly, because he’s not entirely sure what to say to this.

But apparently he managed not to put his foot in his mouth, because she chuckles and relaxes again.

“Yeah. That was the sort of man he was.”


	9. Chapter 9

Meg wasn’t planning on going to the prom. She didn’t know if Castiel was going to be there or not, but she assumed that either way they weren’t going together anymore. She had tried talking to him, but every time she got his sister instead with a different excuse of why he couldn’t talk to her at the moment. Eventually, she stopped calling. A girl could take a hint.

And it irked her a little bit. He was the one who wanted to have the mature relationship going into college, but he wasn’t capable of getting on the phone? She wasn’t going to beg him and she sure as hell wasn’t going to change her plans because he threw a tantrum.

So she ignored the part of her screaming in the back of her mind that she needed to keep trying and she ignored the way her chest ached late at night when she was trying and failing to all asleep. She ignored the tears that randomly swell up in her eyes as she tried to go on about her business and she acted as if nothing was wrong.

She didn’t succeed entirely, because her father caught on almost immediately.

She found him sitting on the couch alone one afternoon when she returned to school. It surprised him seeing him there, because he was usually working at that time and he wouldn’t be back until the evening. He would help Mary cook dinner while the two of them giggled and made jokes in their little world of where their kids were completely excluded.

A big part of why she felt so miserable there was that she hadn’t felt as close to her dad as she used to. As if Mary had stolen a bit of his attention from her. She was selfish for being mad at him, because he was happy and she was growing up and leaving and she had also got a boyfriend. Emotions were pesky little things that didn’t understand logic reasoning at all, though, and a part of her was convinced he wouldn’t even miss her once she went away.

So she was surprised, to say the least, when she walked in and found him sitting in the living room’s arm chair, clearly waiting for her to arrive.

“We need to talk, Meggie.”

Meg sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. She really wasn’t in the mood to hear this.

“If it’s about the road trip again, then no,” she said, curtly. “I already told you, I’m not changing my mind…”

“Sit down.”

Meg went quiet, too surprise at her father’s cutting words to really react. He was staring at her with his yellow eyes and a hard line on his mouth, so this must have been more serious than she had imagined. Intrigued and a little taken aback, Meg sat on the couch close to him. He put his elbows on his knees and leaned over to look at her even closely.

“Are you alright?”

“What kind of question is that?” Meg snapped and immediately regretted. She straightened her shoulders and tried to answer in a calmer tone: “Yes, I’m fine, why wouldn’t I be?”

She didn’t fool him for a second.

“Mary wanted to take you and Dean shopping for the prom, but you told her that wouldn’t be necessary,” Azazel reminded her. “So… what happened with Castiel? Do I need to kill the boy?”

Meg had to laugh at how to the point he was being.

“No, you don’t have to kill him,” Meg said. She went quiet and then added in a lower tone: “It was my fault.”

He didn’t ask any more questions, but she ended up telling him the full story. And she must have been holding it on for longer than she thought. She probably had been holding it back since Castiel announced he was going away to study in his dream school. Perhaps that was the reason she hadn’t said anything: because she had seen the end coming weeks, maybe months before he ever did. She had been postponing telling him because she was a coward.

Because she knew it would hurt like hell.

And now it had become almost too much to bear. The tears flooded her eyes two sentences into the story, but she didn’t let them fall until her father moved to sit on the couch by her side and cuddled her head against his chest. He patted her hair and said consoling words, but mostly he let her cry and when she calmed down a little, he stood up to bring her some tissues. Meg never told him how thankful she was for that. She didn’t know who else to turn to, she’d had no friends in that godforsaken town in all that time. Castiel had been the only bright spot there and losing him had been much harder than she expected.

“There you go. It’s okay,” Azazel told her, squeezing her hand while she blew her nose. “It’s going to be okay. You really cared about him, huh?” Meg turned to look at him, confused at that statement, and her father shrugged. “I think it’s the first boy that’s ever made you cry.”

There wasn’t anger in his voice, but a certain… resignation. As if he knew there was nothing he could do to fix this. This was beyond either of them. It was an inevitable part of Meg growing up. It didn’t mean they had to like it, of course, but there it was.

“I don’t think I ever felt like this for any other boy, dad,” Meg confessed as she wiped her eyes. She wouldn’t have said that to anyone else and suddenly, she realized how much she had missed just talking to her dad like this.

“I know, sweetie,” he said, nodding. “And I know right now it looks like you will never be okay again, but trust me, one day it will stop hurting.”

Her dad usually was right about a lot of things, but this was something he got wrong though and through. It’s a shame he didn’t live to find out. Meg believes he would’ve found it hilarious.

He got up and fished a bag he had hidden behind the couch.

“But that doesn’t mean you have to miss your prom dance,” he said, as he put the bag in Meg’s lap. “I told Mary to get you a dress anyway.”

Meg fished it out and winced. It was dark blue and it had what appeared to be a big bow in one of the straps. It wasn’t what she would’ve chosen for herself at all, but she couldn’t complain. After all, it was her fault for getting all dramatic about it and refusing to go with Mary.

“Dad… I can’t…”

“Sure you can,” Azazel insisted. “I know you don’t like the idea of doing normal things girls your age are all doing…”

“Dad, seriously…”

“But I truly think this is something you have to do,” he kept saying. “It’ll be the last school dance you ever go to, so you might as well go. If only to show that Castiel boy what he’ll be missing.”

Meg chuckled a little. Of course her father hadn’t believed her when she told him it wasn’t Castiel’s fault that they weren’t talking. Of course he wanted her to wear a cheesy dress and go to a stupid dance. Maybe because he was already taking her whole road trip across the country plans way better than Meg had hoped for, she nodded in agreement.

“Thanks, Daddy,” she said.

He put an arm around her shoulders and held her tight.

“You’re welcome, princess,” he replied, leaving a kiss atop of her head. “Now you better go and give them hell.”

Meg could do that, just to make him happy. Yes, she didn’t mind it if that meant that she got to make Castiel a little bit uncomfortable. She had been wrong to delay that conversation and she was grown enough not to admit that. If he wasn’t grown enough to hear what she had to say in her defense, that wasn’t her problem.

She finished applying her lip gloss and took one last look in the mirror. She had curled her hair so her black locks looked even fluffier and bigger than usual. She’d made sure to rip the bow from the dress first and to get some high heels sandals to go along with them. She didn’t feel entirely comfortable in that get-up, but she could make it work. She took a deep breath and reminded herself that if she needed to get home, she could always steal the car keys from Dean and drive herself back.

Not that Dean would let her close enough to him to actually attempt that. His dad had lend him the Impala for the night and of course he was going to be watching those keys like a lion. On top of it, he actually seemed pretty pissed off that Meg was going with them after she’d said she wouldn’t. He was standing near the doorway, with his lips pouted and his arms crossed over his chest. As usual, she couldn’t bring herself to care about his opinion.

And the way her father’s eyes lit up upon seeing her made her think going along with this stupid dance thing would be worth it after all.

“You look beautiful, princess,” he told her when she finished climbing down the stairs. Dean huffed with annoyance as Azazel and Meg hugged and she stuck her tongue out at him over her father’s shoulder.

“What is it, Dean?” she asked him mockingly. “No one told you how beautiful you look or something?”

“No, but you took your damn sweet time,” he protested. “We should have left ten minutes ago.”

“Relax. It’s not like anyone else will be there in time.” Meg rolled her eyes. He was just being grumpy for the sake of being grumpy and she was really not willing to tolerate it.

And for once, Mary got on her side too:

“It’s true.” She produced a camera from somewhere and pointed it at the both of them. “There’s plenty of time for pictures!”

Dean bitched and moaned until Sam pointed out he was only delaying things even further. So finally Dean agreed to shut up, force a smile and pose with Meg. Mary snap what must have been at least two dozen pictures, then kissed Dean on the cheek and ruffled his hair before she finally allowed them to walk out of the door.

The second they weren’t under the watchful eyes of the adults, though, he went back to being a complete ass.

“Nope, you’re going on the backseat,” he informed her when Meg reached out for the passenger seat’s handle.

“Why?” she asked, a little taken aback by that sudden pettiness.

“Because Cas is riding shotgun and this is my car,” Dean replied. “And I say so. That reason enough for you?”

“Wow, you’re being such a delight to be around tonight.”

“Well, sweetie, you either comply or you walk to the dance,” Dean shrugged. “Your call.”

Meg was tempted to be a bitch, go back inside and tell on him to Mary or better yet, declare she wasn’t going after all. On the other hand, that would’ve been akin to admitting that Dean was getting under her skin. And a part of her suspected that was exactly what he wanted her to do: for her to quit, to back down and leave him alone with Castiel.

She smiled at him like the only thing she wanted more than anything else in the world was to bite his head off.

“Fine,” she replied, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “Let’s do things your way.”

The ride to Castiel’s home was awkwardly silent, but it didn’t get any better once Castiel came outside and climbed into the car without saying a word.

Just a few short weeks before, Meg had imagined she would go inside and Naomi and Chuck would insist on taking pictures of the two of them like Mary had done. Castiel would give her a corsage that would match her dress and they would pose together. She would protest it was cheesy and terrible but he would laugh and say he didn’t mind the cheesiness.

And now that none of it had happened like that, Meg didn’t feel as adamantly about the cheesiness either.

“Heya, Cas. Looking good,” Dean congratulated him. “Bet you’re gonna catch all the girls’ eyes.”

Castiel pulled from his bowtie as if he was very nervous. Meg observed him moving in the seat, looking for a way out or maybe trying to decide how to even respond to that when his ex-girlfriend was literally sitting inches away from him. She did nothing to relieve him from his suffering, so ultimately he was forced to look over his shoulder and acknowledge her presence. He was too polite to do otherwise.

“Uh… hello, Meg,” he muttered.

“Oh, now you’re talking to me?”

It came out a lot more aggressive than she intended. Then again, her first intentions had been to simply ignore Castiel had said anything at all. She failed at that, and she failed at hiding her anger. She felt her cheeks burning up as she dug her nails in her knees.

“Ignore her,” Dean said. “That’s what I’m planning to do.”

Castiel still didn’t seem comfortable. Meg sat right in the middle of the backseat where she knew he could see her through the rearview mirror if he rose his eyes, not saying a word, but silently staring at him while Dean continued to be an oblivious idiot and talking about all the girls that were going to be all over Castiel once they got to the dance.

“You’ll see. You might not have brought a date, but I assure you, by the end of the night, you’re going to find someone just right for you.”

Castiel grumbled something that Meg didn’t quite catch, but it sounded a lot like he was asking Dean to shut up. Dean promptly ignored him and babbled on about what a stud he was.

She’d had plenty of awkward rides in Dean’s car before, but Meg had to admit this one was by far the worst of all. Luckily for everybody, it ended before she lost her patience for Dean talking about all the girls that wanted to get with Cas and stabbed him in the throat with her heel to get him to shut up. Dean parked his giant ass car in one of the few available spots (“See? This is why I wanted to leave earlier, but someone hadn’t finished with her make-up”) and got out, fixing the sleeves of his tuxedo as if he was James Bond or something. Meg rolled her eyes so hard she almost feared they would get stuck that way.

Before she could reach for the handle, however, the door opened for her. It took her a second to realize what had happened. Castiel had practically run around the car to get it open for her, and now he was standing around looking at his feet, his cheeks and his neck a dark shade of red. Meg almost wished he hadn’t had done that. Because no the cold fury she had intended to maintain against him was melting and there wasn’t much that she could do to help it, short of taking the door and closing it in his face.

But that would be Dean’s level of pettiness, so she simply got off the car. She did ignore the hand he was extending to help her, instead choosing to smooth over an invisible crease in her dress’ skirt.

“Ready to go inside?” Dean asked before she and Castiel could exchange a look.

“Yes,” Castiel muttered. “Yes, I guess so.”

Meg let them go ahead. She didn’t want it to look like she had come with them, she didn’t want anyone to be confused about her and Castiel being together anymore, but she couldn’t even do that properly: Castiel stopped at the door with his head turned towards her. Dean took two steps inside before realizing his friend wasn’t following and Meg almost topped on her tracks. She took a second to hesitate and then lifted up her head and marched inside, ignoring the both of them.

It was easy to get lost in the crowd after that. The gym was jam-packed with people, couples flooding the dance floor and moving and cheering as the music invaded the air, vibrating in her stomach and making it hard for her to hear her own thoughts. She elbowed her way through a crowd of juniors that had gathered round the punch bowl and got herself something to drink before scanning the crowd.

There were some girls standing in a corner and giggling who seemed to be unaccompanied, so she wasn’t exactly surprised when Dean approached them while dragging Castiel behind them. She grimaced and continued looking. It took her some minutes, but finally she found what she was looking for: a boy with sandy hair and pimples in his chin that was standing around in a corner with all the appearance of wanting to be anywhere else but there. No friends or date on sight. She made her way towards him and practically screamed over the noise:

“Hey! Wanna dance?!”

The boy startled and looked at her like a deer in the highlights, but he nodded, so Meg grabbed him by the arm and lead him towards the floor. It wasn’t all that great, if she was being honest. There were way too many people dancing and moving, bumping into her and pushing her uncomfortably close to her improvised partner. He kept trying to have a conversation with her over the music.

“My name’s Bartholomew!”

“Okay, whatever!” Meg screamed back. “Let’s just dance!”

Bartholomew couldn’t even do that for the couple of songs Meg remained with him. He completely lacked any rhythm, just sort of clumsily moving his hands and feet in any direction, and he kept shouting questions at Meg that she didn’t quite catch and frankly didn’t care to answer. He asked for her name several times, but Meg never volunteered it. Every time the lights fell on his face, she couldn’t help but to notice the pimples and his bony cheeks. He definitely wasn’t the best looking boy there, but then again, the best looking boy would probably be dancing with a junior girl who would giggle a lot and let him grab her by the hips and kiss her in the dark corners of the gym.

The thought made her blood boil.

“Hey!” Bartholomew shouted, leaning over her so she could have a full display of his pimples. “Are you okay?”

Meg realized she had stopped dancing. She felt her skin was on fire and suddenly the lights were blurry over her face.

“Yeah!” she shouted back. “I’m just… I’m thirsty!”

“I’ll get you something to drink!” Bartholomew offered and scurried away among the crowd.

Meg did her best to not be there when he came back. She moved to the edge of the floor to escape all the couples and try to get some air. She felt lightheaded all of the sudden and her knees were trembling. She needed some air right that instant…

Someone grabbed her by the elbow and Meg turned quickly, ready to shout at them to let go.

A pair of blue eyes she knew all too well paralyzed her, the words dying on her tongue almost instantly. She hadn’t had the chance to take a good look at Castiel before. Goddammit, he looked adorable in that black suit. He had tried to tame his constantly messy hair with gel, but it hadn’t worked. It was already standing up again as he moved closer to her.

“Meg, are you okay?”

It was the same question Bartholomew had asked, but it sounded like something completely different in Meg’s ears. It sounded like tenderness, like caring. Castiel was frowning and staring at her with the same intensity he always did, and Meg’s knees trembled. What was left of her anger dissolved away in an instant just because he had cared to ask about her well-being. With a thump of her heart, she realized she had missed him. She had missed those eyes looking at her, she had missed his voice and his hands on her skin and the ridiculous eternal frown between his eyebrows.

She leaned into him almost unconsciously.

“I need some air,” she said.

He nodded and they made her way together towards the door. They didn’t quite managed to get there before Dean intercepted us. Of course he did.

“Cas! What are you doing?”

They were in a quieter part of the gym now, so they didn’t need to speak so loud anymore. Castiel still raised his head and spoke directly at him as if he needed Dean to read his lips.

“Meg’s not feeling well,” Castiel explained. “I’m going with her outside.”

Dean looked downright aggravated at this.

“Cas, you said…”

“I know what I said, Dean,” Castiel replied, his grasp of Meg’s elbow becoming just a little bit tighter. “But I can’t.”

“Cas…” Dean started, but right at that moment, the music went completely quiet and the lights focused on the stage near the DJ.

“Alright, how are you doing on this beautiful night, kids?” he asked. “Ready to crown your prom king and queen?”

“Listen to me, Cas,” Dean said, taking another step closer to them. “You can’t just go back to her as if nothing had happened…”

“Hey, don’t talk to me as if I’m not here,” Meg complained in a hushed whisper. She glared at her stepbrother as she moved to stand between the two boys. “Castiel can do whatever the hell he wants and he doesn’t have to listen to you or anybody…”

“Listen, bitch, this isn’t about you.”

Meg was about that clearly it was, but Castiel stepped forwards before she could even open her mouth.

“I don’t appreciate you talking to her like that, Dean,” he said, dropping his voice an octave, which made him sound even angrier than before.

“Are you kidding me? After what she put you through? I’m…”

The cheers from the dance floor drowned out his words. Some girl in a pink dress had just climbed onto the stage and she was being crowned by a horrible looking plastic tiara. None of them paid any attention to her.

“I thank you for being here for me,” Castiel said. He lassoed his arm around Meg’s waist and pulled her closer to him, as if to show to Dean what was happening now. “But Meg and I need to talk.”

She was too surprised to react. Where was this new assertiveness coming from? While they were fighting he couldn’t even confront Dean, but now?

Dean was also stunned, shaking his head like a dog coming out of the water.

“Cas…” he started saying, but the DJ’s voice boomed across the dance floor, interrupting them:

“Dean Winchester! Where are you? Come on up here, prom king!”

The ceiling lights moved around and several people turned around looking for him. A couple of fingers pointed in their direction.

“There he is! There he is!”

Meg and Castiel stepped behind as Dean was put on the spotlight. He paralyzed and looked nervous before he swallowed, smiled and waved at the people cheering him on and calling for him. Because, what else was he supposed to do? Tell them to wait until he finished arguing with his friend and his stepsister?

Of course, they took the opportunity to sneak away as soon as Dean’s back was turned. Meg wasn’t sure who pulled towards the door and who followed, but a moment later, they were back on the open space of the parking lot, the stars shining over their heads as they fled the party. Castiel’s arm was still on her waist and Meg took two steps to get away from him and breathe in the night air. She felt so much better and it almost had nothing to do with the fact they had rendered Dean speechless for a second there.

“I’m sorry,” Castiel muttered, as the cheers and shouts came from inside, a little muted by the distance.

“For what?”

“He shouldn’t have called you that.”

Meg laughed as she raised her face to look at his.

“Cas, please. You think he hasn’t called me worse in all the time I’ve been living at his house?”

Castiel still seemed pretty displeased, so Meg stretched her hand and tried to smooth out the furrow in his brow with her fingertips.

“You worry too much,” she told him. “I’m fine. It doesn’t matter.”

He didn’t stop her or tried to swat her away. In fact, when Meg lowered her hand to touch his cheek, he leaned into her touch with a deep sigh. He still had an arm around her waist and when he lowered his gaze, Meg knew exactly what was going to happen.

Perhaps it was a mistake. She probably shouldn’t have let it happen. It wouldn’t change the way things were; if anything, it would complicate them even more.

But she just wasn’t strong enough to deny the ay her heart was racing and how much she had been wishing for him to look at her like that again. In the end, it was her who moved for the kiss. His lips were just as sweet as always, but there was something melancholic about the way he stood close, about the way his fingers slid down her hair. He held her as if against the warmth of his chest and broke away. His eyes looked steely gray in the darkness.

“I…” he started, but Meg didn’t let him continue. There’d be time for words and regrets and anger later on. Now she just wanted him, she want to feel his hands on her hips and his mouth on her skin again.

The gym door burst open and Dean came stumbling down, with the plastic crown still in his head. Castiel broke the kiss and turned to his friend, but Meg raised up her chin, defiant, ready to insult Dean right back if he started again.

“Dean…” Castiel began saying, but Dean raised a hand to shut him up.

“You know what? It doesn’t matter. You clearly have issues to resolve.” He searched around his jacket pocket and did something Meg would’ve never thought him capable of doing: he pulled out the keys to his car and handed them to Castiel. “Take her somewhere nice.”

Castiel clutched the keys in his hand and smiled at his friend.

“Thank you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dean groaned. “Just get out of here.”

Castiel didn’t look back at him while they were walking towards the Impala, but Meg did. Dean removed the crown from his head and toyed with it while he watched them go. He looked defeated. As if he’d just realized he’d lost, or maybe that he had never been a part of it after all.

Despite all the bad blood between the two of them, she almost pitied him.

But he completely vanished from his mind once she was in the passenger seat and Castiel started the engine.

“Where should we go?” he asked.

“Doesn’t matter. Just drive.”

So he did.

 

* * *

 

The new highway takes them out of the town in a matter of minutes. It’s almost sad that they don’t get to see much of the woody area outside the town. Many of the places that used to be theirs aren’t there anymore.

“Do you remember the clearing?” Meg asks, with a chuckle.

“I think they built a new road there now,” he comments.

“Shame.” Meg clicks her tongue. “We could have stopped there for ten minutes.”

He barks out a laugh at the suggestion, knowing exactly what she means.

 

* * *

 

They left the streets of the town behind and took an empty back road that surrounded the woods outside. Meg rolled down the window and stick her face out, letting the wind mess up with her hair. For a moment or two she kept her eyes shut, trying to put an order to her thoughts, trying to find a joke or something to say, something to lighten up the air or to let them begin the conversation they both knew was coming.

She came up empty and when she looked at Castiel again, she started thinking maybe it didn’t matter after all. He was smiling. For the first time since they had run into each other, he was beaming as if he was he was the happiest person on earth. Meg shook her head, considering to remind him that he was crazy and this was just not what it seemed to be.

However, watching him smile revived all the butterflies in her stomach that she thought she’d squashed. She found herself grinning back at him and he glance at her out of the corner of his eye, she laughed out, completely elated to be there, and to be with him and to ignore the future coming at them like a freight train. She moved closer to him and put a hand on his knee.

“Where are you taking me, Clarence?” she asked, playfully.

“I thought you said you didn’t care,” he replied with a shrug.

She really didn’t. She just wanted an excuse to lean over towards him and throw her breath on his face, to kiss him and touch and make him all sort of bothered. Castel showed incommensurable restraint by keeping his hands on the wheel and his eyes on the road, but Meg had the impression he was definitely driving a little faster.

Finally, he took a sharp curve on a secondary road that lead right into an area sheltered from prying eyes by tall trees. The car rattled as it passed over a couple of bumps and finally stopped underneath the branches of a great oak. Meg took a look out of the window, curious. The place was completed deserted and a few inches further, the pavement turned into dirt, as if someone had tried building a street there and had given up halfway into it.

“What is this?” she asked, amused.

“It’s a place Dean told me about,” Castiel explained. Once again, the blood was turning his cheeks deep red. “Where he sometimes bring girls to… on dates, I mean.”

“Ah.” Meg crooked an eyebrow at him. “Good to know where your mind is.”

She still had her hand on his knee. Castiel looked down at it and then, before Meg even knew what was going on, he put his hand on her neck and pulled her in for a fierce kiss. Their teeth crashed a second before they could accommodate their faces. Meg’s stomach flipped. This wasn’t like his usual gentleness. This was new, demanding and desperate and she wasn’t sure she didn’t like it.

He must have confused her surprise with hesitance, because he broke apart and watched her face with that stare that made her think he could see past her face.

“If you don’t want to be here with me, you only need to say,” he told her. “I’ll take you home or back to the dance or wherever you want to go…”

“No.” Meg shook her head. “That’s not it. I want to be here, Cas.”

Cas’ expression softened up and he leaned over to kiss her once more, but she put a hand on his shoulder to keep him away.

“This doesn’t change anything, do you understand? I’m still going to leave. You’re still going to San Francisco. I need to know you know this.”

There. She’d said it. Castiel winced for barely a fraction of a second before he put his hands on her cheeks and brought her in for another kiss.

“I know,” he whispered. “Maybe that’s why I brought you here. I didn’t want that last conversation we had to be how it all ended.”

Meg could have said something petty, like “Why didn’t you take my calls, then?” but she was tired. Tired of fighting with him, tired of missing him, tired of being angry and sad. If that was the last chance they had to be together, she wasn’t about to waste it by dragging things that couldn’t be changed now.

Cas’ hand went up her back slowly and his fingers fidgeted with the zipper. He looked at her again, the question he wanted to ask caught in his throat. Meg reached for the zipper and pulled it down herself, sliding her arms out of the dress’ straps and letting it fall to her waist. The cool air against her skin made her shiver, but the reason she got goose bumps was the way Castiel breathed out at seeing her.

“You’re so beautiful,” he muttered.

“Shut up.”

He did as he was told. For the next half hour, they said very little. They found condoms in the glove compartment and after some clumsy fumbling, they moved to the back seat to be more comfortable.

It wasn’t anything at all like the books and magazines she had read said it would be. It did hurt a little, but she didn’t bleed. Castiel moved slow and stopped several times to make sure she was okay and Meg kept whispering her encouragement at every step. Their agitated breaths tarnished the windows and she was sure they made some noises that could’ve been heard from far away if there had been anyone other than some indifferent owls around. He finished before she did and then Meg guided his hand so he could touch her the way she wanted him to.

Afterwards, she laid down on top of his chest waiting for her heart to calm down. They were covered in nothing but their own sweat, yet the night was so warm and they were holding unto each other so close that they didn’t feel cold at all. Castiel ran his fingers through her hair, untangling it when he found knots. He was grinning like an idiot when she looked up. He’d never seen more satisfied.

“What are you so happy about?” she asked him, teasingly.

“Nothing,” he said, but then he chuckled. “I’m glad it was you.”

Meg was disarmed by that simple assertion. It suddenly dawn on her what had been going on there: Dean’s insistence on Castiel finding himself a girl that night, the conveniently placed condoms, the secluded spot. Dean had been pressuring Cas to find someone else to lose his virginity to that night. What a prick.

She analyzed his face, curious despite herself as to how far he would’ve gone along with that plan.

“Anyone else you had in mind?”

“No.” He left a kiss at the top of her head. “Not really.”

He didn’t say the words and Meg was glad he didn’t. Because if he had told her he loved her again, it would’ve been so much harder to keep pretending she didn’t as well.

 

* * *

 

His profile has changed very little. Meg notice this as they sit in the airport, waiting for her flight to be announced. Castiel brought them both coffee and pretzels because she mentioned she hates plane food. Now he’s by her side, sipping from his cup. The light pouring in through the window behind them reflects on his face, forming a sort of halo with his messy hair. He looks disheveled and scruffy, with stubble covering his cheeks and wearing the same creased suit as the day before. Meg is sure there’s nothing he would like to do more than go to home and have a shower, but he’s there, waiting alongside her until the last second.

He notices her staring, of course.

“Is there a problem?”

Meg shakes her head and bites into her pretzel pensively. She’s not sure what she’s supposed to say now, but she tries anyway:

“So I don’t get to leave Chicago a lot,” she comments. “But since you’re a famous photographer and all…”

“I’m not famous,” he says, smirking at that notion.

“… maybe you’ll be in town sometime,” Meg continues before her courage abandons her. “And maybe I should give you my number. So you can call me if that happens.”

Castiel’s blue eyes pierce through her like they always do and she holds her breath for a few seconds, waiting for his answer.

“I… I had a great time this weekend,” he admits. “And I’m nothing but glad we met again.”

He pauses and Meg continues to stay silence she can sense that sentence not finishing quite the way she wants it to.

“But I’ve been giving it a lot of thought to what you said,” he continues. “About us, being in love with the past. I really only have a vague idea about who you are now, Meg.”

Meg taps her fingers on the armrest. He could be right, of course.

“So, we’re strangers again. That’s fine.” She shrugs. “We can get to know each other all over again.”

“Or maybe closure was the most we could expect from this,” Castiel points out. “Maybe it’d be pushing our luck to…”

He doesn’t finish that sentence and he doesn’t have to. Meg’s flight is announced on the screen and she stands up without another word.

 

* * *

 

They made love one more time in the back of Dean’s car that night and then slept a little, closely pressed against each other in the confining space. The dawn came all too soon, a white light that poured in through the window and woke them up shivering. They felt around until they found all of their clothes and then they came out of the car to watch the sun rise. Castiel put his jacket around her shoulders like the perfect gentleman he was and Meg stayed very close to him with the excuse of zapping some body heat.

“I’m leaving in two weeks,” she commented. “My car will be ready by then.”

“Two weeks?” he repeated, blinking at her. “That’s… that’s too soon.”

“Gotta make the most of the summer. There’s going to be lots of places willing to hire someone who is just passing by the town,” Meg explained. “I’m going all the way to the Grand Canyon and then I’m gonna pay my brother a visit in California and then, who knows? I always did want to see the Empire State.”

He was sad, but he smiled anyway.

“Maybe you could drop by San Francisco some time,” he suggested. “Come visit me. I could probably be settled there by then. I can give your dad my address and he can give it to you…”

He stopped his rambling when he realized Meg was slowly shaking her head.

“It’s not going to work, Clarence,” she told him. She spoke softly, as if whispering it would break his heart any less. “I think it’ll be best if we just… leave it.”

He didn’t say a word for the longest time, his eyes lost in the orange and green sky slowly turning green.

“Will you come to say goodbye to me?”

“No,” he muttered. “It’s… it’s already hard enough as it is, Meg.”

She nodded silently. She wasn’t going to hold it against him, of course.

They stayed until the sun was up in the sky and then they drove back to the school. The party was over and there was no one left, which meant that Dean had hitched a ride with someone else. Castiel took her home and parked the car right outside.

“My dad’s probably waiting up for me,” she laughed. “Maybe the first time you don’t bring me home by ten, huh?”

Castiel laughed as well, if only to make the moment a little less bitter. When she tried to hand him back his jacket, he refused.

“Keep it. It’s cold. I can pick it up later.”

“Okay.”

She leaned over and gave him one last kiss. Then she got out of the car and walked towards the house with long, confident strides, her head held high as if she had no doubts about the choice she had made.

Castiel waited to see if she looked over her shoulder. Meg didn’t look back so he wouldn’t see the tears streaming down her cheeks.

 

* * *

 

Castiel follows her to the gate and tugs at the helm of his coat, nervous. He feels like he should ask something else, but he isn’t exactly sure what.

“Well… uh… have a good flight,” he mutters awkwardly.

Meg smirks at him and throws her arms around his neck. Castiel closes his eyes and kisses her back, because he can’t help it, because it’s easy. He knows kissing her contradicts everything he’s just said, but if he can have at least one last taste of her lips, he’s going to jump at the chance.

She lets go of him way too soon and grabs her suitcase. Castiel watches her stride away, a strange oppression that he refuses to identify settling on his chest. He keeps his eyes on the back of her head, her curls jumping with every step she takes away from him and he wonders if this is how he’ll always find himself in the end: watching her leave, waiting in vain for her to look over her shoulder.

Meg does look over her shoulder this time. When she does, it’s too late. Castiel has disappeared among the crowd of friends and family saying goodbye to their loved ones.


	10. Chapter 10

When he gets home, Hannah is waiting for him right behind the door. She chews him up for not picking her up and driving her home like he promised he was going to do. Naomi and Chuck don’t seem particularly interested in intervening on his behalf and Castiel lowers his head and accepts his sister’s scolding silently because she’s partially right. He did decide to go with Meg in a whim and left her sister stranded at home without any means of going back to the city.

“You’re lucky my boss is so understanding,” she tells him, rolling her eyes. “I had to sell her a convoluted story about us having a flat tire on the road and not being able to get a tow service because I couldn’t say that my sentimental brother went to drive his ex-girlfriend to the airport.”

“Really? You outright lied to her?” Castiel asks. “I thought that was against your moral code.”

Hannah doesn’t find his joke funny. She has learned the glare of cold fury from Naomi very well and Castiel decides not to provoke her any further.

“I’m sorry,” he says, lowering his eyes. “I should’ve told you.”

“Well, at least you’ll get to have dinner with us this time,” Naomi adds from the kitchen. “You know, before you leave tomorrow.”

There’s an implicit reproach in her words and Castiel winces. She will be mad at him at least until he tells her what he’s got planned.

“Actually… if it’s not much to ask, I would like to stay for a couple days more.”

Naomi turns around so fast she almost a halo of flour forms around her and Hannah’s eyebrows rise so fast they almost disappear behind her bangs. Even Chuck stops typing for a second to look at him. Castiel continues talking as if he hasn’t noted his family’s reaction.

“Hannah can take my car back to Topeka and I can rent one to go look for it later,” he continues. “I’d like to stay to work on Dean and Benny’s album so I can have it ready before they leave for their honeymoon. I’ll be easier to focus here and I’ll lose less time than if I go back to my studio and then send it to them… I mean… if it’s okay for me to stay.”

Naomi is too stunned to react, but Chuck stands up with a smile on his lips.

“Of course you can stay, son.”

So that’s settled.

The dinner is actually a lot more amicable than Castiel expected. His mother makes spaghetti with sauce and they try to avoid any and all uncomfortable topics. They talk about the wedding and old friends and neighbors, some of whom he doesn’t really remember. Naomi knows all the latest gossip about their lives and she wastes no time in telling Castiel about them, and even though he doesn’t particularly care, he pretends he finds it all very scandalous. Chuck comments on how he’s planning to finish his new book soon and all the messages from fans he’s been receiving online (“I still have to get the handle on this whole Twitter thing”) and Hannah talks about this guy she started seeing.

None of them mentions Meg and it comes somewhat as a surprise after Naomi reacted so strongly upon finding out Castiel he met her again after all those years. Perhaps it’s because Meg is important to him, but to one else in his family. He laughs at his father’s incompetence with technology and teases Hannah about bringing her new boyfriend home, but in truth, he doesn’t have his mind or his heart in any of it. He keeps thinking about Meg, about whether she arrived home in time, if she’s going back to her usual life with ease or if she’s thinking about him as well…

Naomi declares that since she cooked, it’s only fair for Castiel and Chuck to do the dishes. Hannah is spared because, in Naomi’s words, she’s allowed to play favorites. Castiel puts up a complaint because he knows that’s what they’re expecting of him, but a few minutes later, he finds himself in front of the sink, with his shirt’s sleeves rolled up as he scrubs the dishes clean and passes them to Chuck. They don’t say a word to each other, but Chuck hums to himself happily and Castiel finds himself smiling.

 “You know, since you’re staying a little longer, maybe we can go out, you and I,” Chuck says when Castiel closes the faucet and dries his hand with the napkins. “Not for a drink or something, but just… out. To have a chat.”

“I’d like that,” Castiel says.

Chuck pats him in the shoulder and wishes him goodnight. As Castiel makes his way to the stairs, he hears the rhythm of his father’s fingers typing away in his computer.

It’s mellow. Calm. The type of calm he rarely remembers having in this house. In fact, this has been the nicest time he remembers spending with his parents in a very long time and he doesn’t know whether that’s a sad thing or a progress he thought was impossible. He always thought family was this dramatic, messy thing that he should avoid at all costs.

Maybe he was holding on too tight to the past. Maybe he should have given them another chance from the start.

As he lies down on his bed, staring at the ceiling and willing himself to sleep, he wonders why he couldn’t give himself another chance as well.

 

* * *

 

Meg’s apartment looks strangely cold and empty.

She supposes it always is cold and empty, but usually, when she gets there, she’s too tired to notice. Her life is at the hospital, with her patients, doing her job and the only reason she keeps this small apartment is because she can’t sleep over there as well.

She’s proud of what she does, of course, but as she settles down her suitcase and flails down on the couch, exhausted from the flight, she can’t help but to think it’s a little bit… sad. The only relationship she had there was with Luc and he ended being a first class scumbag. She never got along with her colleagues. All the friendships she made in college dissolved as soon she graduated because they weren’t real friendships. They were study groups.

And now, as she stares at the white walls of her place, she finds herself missing Lawrence. It’s almost funny: she spent so many years wanting to get out of there and after Azazel’s death, she was absolutely certain there was nothing there left for her. Now, she can’t help but miss a little all the people she left there. Mary and Sam with their relentless kindness and their total acceptance of her into their family. Benny, with his sense of humor and his cooking. She even thinks the fact that Dean and her were at each other’s throat just _some_ of the time is an improvement.

And of course, Castiel.

She pushes herself up and looks for her cellphone. It should still be a little early in California and Tom probably isn’t out of the office yet, but he answers the phone anyway.

“Glad to see your plane didn’t explode midair.”

Meg chuckles. A dose of her brother’s dark humor is perhaps precisely what she needs to drown out this weird melancholy that invaded her.

“You know, that would’ve made for an interesting story,” she comments as she goes through her kitchen cabinets. She grimaces at how empty they are. She finds a box of mac and cheese and figures she’s gonna have to settle for that.

“That boring, huh?”

“No, I mean… it was okay. I’ve been to worse weddings,” she says. “Dean’s husband was actually nice and… you wouldn’t believe who I ran into.”

“Three guesses say I’m not gonna be all that surprised when you actually tell me.”

It takes him a moment to realize who she’s talking about when she does.

“Castiel? The lanky giant nerd you used to date?” Tom guffaws, as if that is the best joke he’s heard on his life. “Damn. I never got what you saw on him. He wasn’t your type at all.”

“I was seventeen, I didn’t have a type,” Meg says. She looks into the mac and cheese boiling in the pot and finds it troubling that it looks so sticky and gross. “And he was sweet. He was a cute boy, who grew up to be a… reasonably cute guy…”

“You fucked him, didn’t you?”

Meg gasped, offended and chastises her brother for assuming, but Tom just continues laughs in the certainty that he’s right.

“Well, that’s all nice and good and I’m glad you found someone to do this weekend,” he says, ignoring her protests. “Why are you calling me, though? Aren’t you supposed to be getting ready for your shift?”

Meg lifts a yellow ball of something that definitely doesn’t look like mac and cheese in her spoon and sets it back down in disgust. She’ll get a sandwich or something on the way to the hospital.

“I don’t know.” She tosses away the entire contents on the pot and stops to think about this question. “I guess it was just… weird. Seeing everyone again after so long.”

“Yeah. I never got what the old man saw in that fucking town either,” Tom admits, “but you know, it made him happy.”

“I guess it did.”

They say goodbye and she stands in the kitchen for longer than she cares to admit. She should be jumping on the shower and at the very least filling herself with coffee, but she doesn’t do any of that. Instead, she goes to her room and looks into her closet.

The first year out of school, she led a nomadic life: going from town to town, taking temporary jobs where she could find them, just drifting down the great highways in her second-hand Camaro. She isn’t sure what she was looking for, but strangely enough, she didn’t find it until she got back home for the following Fourth of July and noticed the bags underneath her dad’s eyes, how thin his arms looked.

He never could keep a secret from her.

“The doctor says after the surgery, there won’t be anything to worry about. I didn’t want to worry you, sweetheart.”

Meg had been horrified that he hadn’t told her sooner and she refused to leave town for at least a few months. She did a lot of reading and thinking that summer. Her father had been diagnosed with stomach cancer, which meant surgery was probably the only possibility he had of survival. She read everything she could get her hands on, both on the limited local library and on the Internet.

The boxes pile up on top of her clothes and she sneezes from the dust when she picks one up and puts it down. She founds old records and some books, but that’s not what she’s looking for, so she puts down another one.

Azazel was scared. He tried not to act like it, but it was impossible to hide it. He took two bites of his hospital dinner and refused to eat any more, even when Meg practically spoon-fed it to him.

“Hey, honey, I don’t want to tell you how you’re supposed to live your life or anything,” he told her the night before the procedure. “But I think I would be happy if you… well, you know. If you could just… I worry about you, being out there on the road all the time, a pretty girl all alone…”

“Yeah,” Meg said, toying with the spoon. “I was thinking maybe next semester I can give college a try. For the hell of it.”

“You will?” Azazel asked, crooking an eyebrow. His grin looked joyous when she nodded. “That’s good. I’m glad to hear that.”

The third box contains clothes that no longer fit her and that she’s been meaning to give away for ages. The fourth contains candles, a flashlight and other tools she sometimes need around the house, like a hammer, nails…

The surgery went well and her father survived. The following semester, Meg started her first year of pre-med. She had found something she was actually very passionate about. She had found she liked the idea of helping people, of saving lives, so others wouldn’t have to fear, like she did, that their loved ones would leave them behind all too soon.

The fifth box has what she was looking for. There’s pictures of her and her brother from before they moved to Kansas, a picture of her in the blue dress she wore for prom hugging her father.

She wonders if he was already sick by then and hiding it from her, if that was the reason he insisted she went to prom. She wonders if he ever imagined the cancer would return with a vengeance years later. She wonders what he would say if she told him she spent the weekend with the first boy that ever made her cry.

She guesses he would’ve found it funny. Just like he found it funny she kept all those things in that box when she went back into her old room and put all that trash in a box to take it to college with her.

At the bottom of the box, there’s a notebook with yellowed pages, and stuck between then, drawings that show impressive talent for having been done by a seventeen year boy. One of them shows her, eternally young, leaning against a tree. She always found it overwhelming that she looked so beautiful in his eyes.

 

* * *

 

The days slip by almost unnoticed. Hannah leaves for Topeka and Castiel spends most of his time sitting in silence next to Chuck. He stares at the words on his screen with an almost comical look of concentration in his face while Castiel works on the wedding album. Sometimes Naomi brings them coffee and Castiel never forgets to thank her and praise her food every night of the week. He calls to San Francisco a couple of times to make sure his appointments there are kept, but for the most part, his only contact with the outside world are the Winchester brothers and Benny. They come to pick him up a couple of times to go for beers, but for the most part, Castiel stays at home and dedicates his attention to the designing of the album.

Meg’s face haunts him from the pictures: she’s standing by the altar during the ceremony, in the main table during the toast, dancing with Sam and of course, with the rest of the grooms’ families standing on the yard. Every time he finds her in one, he stops for a second to contemplate her face. A warm feeling thrums in his chest every time and he wonders if it would be too creepy to crop her and just keep an image of her smile.

It definitely would. He’s still tempted to do it more than once.

Friday is the last day he’s staying there and Naomi doesn’t seem mad he’s not staying for dinner that night at all. He takes the album to Benny’s diner and smiles with pride when Dean and Benny go through the pages, smiling to themselves and pointing out their favorite moments.

“Man, you did a great job,” Dean tells him, patting him in the back. “Thank you. I wouldn’t have trusted anyone else with the happiest day of my life.”

“You’re welcome, Dean.”

“Meg looks great in this one,” Benny comments, pointing at a picture. “Has anyone talked to her?”

Dean looks a little annoyed, but he shrugs and Sam shakes his head.

“Not since she went back home.”

“Really?” Benny crooks an eyebrow and turns towards Castiel. “And what about you, brotha’?”

Castiel fidgets with his beer nervously. He can’t deny the fact he and Meg slept together. They all saw her come out of her room in the same clothes as the previous day.

“No, not really.” He’s suddenly acutely aware of all the eyes that are on him. “We didn’t… it’s not like…” he stammers pathetically and then takes a sip from his beer. Benny raises his hands.

“I was just asking. No need to get all defensive.”

“I’m not defensive,” Castiel says, and even he has to admit that came out a little defensive. “I just… it’s complicated.”

“Complicated like safe-words complicated or…?” Dean asks and Benny playfully elbows him to shut him up.

Castiel starts nervously listing all the reasons he thinks actually pursuing something with Meg is a bad idea: they live in different parts of the country, they had a relationship in the past but many things have changed since, they have no idea who they are now…

He stops after he realizes how much he’s been speaking. Sam and Dean looked a little awkward, as if they would have much rather prefer not be having this conversation. Benny, however, is looking at him with skepticism.

“Well, that’s a bit disconcerting,” he says. “The way she talked about you… I didn’t think she would kick you to the curb once the weekend was over.”

“She… she didn’t,” Castiel admits. “She said we should try getting to know each other again.”

That statement is punctuated by a prolonged silence.

“And… you told her no?” Sam asks.

“I…” Castiel stutters, but Dean puts down his beer with such force that the entire table trembles.

“Goddammit, Cas,” he groans. “How many times am I gonna have to push to go with the same girl?”

Castiel is surprised by the vehemence of his words, but he’s completely stunned when Dean stands up and starts putting on his jacket.

“Uh… Dean, what are you doing?”

“Sam, you got Meg’s number, right? You think you can get us her address?” Dean asks.

“I… guess,” Sam says. He looks as confused as Castiel about his brother’s sudden burst of energy.

“Good,” Dean says, as he quickly types something in his phone. “Chicago is an eight hour drive. If we take turns of two hours each while the others sleep, we can be there by the morning.”

“Oh, road trip!” Benny claps and stands up to follow her husband. “Now you’re talking!”

“Wait, Dean, are you serious?” Castiel asks.

“Yeah. It’ll be like a great romantic gesture. Chicks dig that stuff,” Dean determines. “Unless you really don’t want to see her again. In which case, you can keep moping and whining and making excuses here.”

Castiel blinks at him a couple of times.

“Dean… why?”

“I just married the love of my life,” Dean explains, putting a hand around Benny’s shoulder. “I’m feeling generous. So… you coming or what?”

Castiel feels the same warm feeling creeping up his chest and he stops hesitating. He stands up, ignoring the voice in the back of his mind telling him all of this is crazy and he stands up as well.

“Sammy?” Dean asks.

Sam sighs and also joins them.

“Someone’s gotta make sure you don’t crash somewhere,” he states tiredly.

 

* * *

 

The week started with Meg feeling tired and melancholic and it ends with her feeling just plain tired. There hasn’t been any more spectacular crashes that require her attention, just minor emergencies here and there, but for some reason, she feels like she’s been completely drained of all her energy. Perhaps because when she wasn’t sleeping that week, she was collecting things in her apartment that had no business being there. Like Luc’s jacket and his records and all the other things he left there.

He came back from the conference on Tuesday, but she still hasn’t seen him. It’s put like they put restraining orders on one another and they make an effort to remain at different parts of the building at all times.

That ends today. If Meg has learned anything the last weekend is that the past would come back to haunt her always unless she made an effort to put it to rest. For example, Sam has been texting her weird things all night, asking about her night is going and shit. She’s going to need to call him when she gets home and explain to him with very small words that just because they had a mildly decent family reunion in which no one ended dead doesn’t mean they’re friends now.

Maybe they are, but she just can’t answer his texts while she’s on her shift. Anyway, first things first.

Saturday is dawning beyond the hospital doors and she’s dying to get home and crash on her bed, but she stays where she is, holding the box she asked the receptionist to keep under her desk that night against her hip. Meg is sure the woman went through its contents and that she gossiped about it with all the other nurses (otherwise, why would they casually be gathering around right at that moment?) but she can’t be bothered to care.

After what feels like an eternity, Luc descends from the elevator, writing something in his cellphone and not even bothering to look up. People have to scurry out of the way to avoid being bumped by him. God, what an asshole. Meg can’t believe that she ever got into bed with that. He passes by her side without even acknowledging her, but that won’t do.

“Luc!” she calls him.

Finally he stops to address something other than whatever is going on in his screen. Probably swiping through Tinder profiles or something. He smiles as if there’s absolutely nothing unusual about his ex-girlfriend wanting to speak with him.

“Oh, hey, Meg. I didn’t see you around. How was your brother’s wedding?”

Meg doesn’t want to talk about the wedding and she doesn’t want to talk to Luc for longer than she strictly has to. So she practically throws the box at him, so fast Luc has no option but to catch to prevent it from smashing into his face.

“Those are all the things you left at my place. We’re done here.”

She turns around and attempts to flee before the nurses’ morning gets even more exciting or before Crowley shows up and reminds them they’re supposed to be professional, but it’s not going to be as easy as that.

“Meg!” he shouts after her. “Meg, come on. Are you really gonna end it like this?”

Meg halts, takes a deep breath and turns around to face him.

“What else is there to say? You cheated on me, we’re over. It’s not that hard.”

Luc seems outright aggravated, as if he thought Meg’s anger was going to dissipate eventually and he would be back in her good graces and into her pants. Only now he’s realizing she means it and they’re really done.

“Meg, I really think we need to talk about this,” Luc insists. He puts the box on the reception’s desk and takes several steps towards him. “Let me buy you breakfast and we can…”

“No, no we can’t,” Meg says. She’s a hairbreadth away from losing her patience and start screaming at him and that will be really bad for the two of them. “I’m tired and I don’t want to talk to you. So just… leave me alone.”

She turns to walk away and that’s when his hand closes over her wrist. Meg looks at him, more than a little bit furious now.

“Let go of me!” she demands.

“Meg, you really don’t want to make a scene…”

“You’re the one making a scene!” Meg replies, pulling her hand and trying to get off his grip. “Let me go right now or…”

“Or what?” Luc asks, his grey eyes shimmering. It’s almost as if he knows Meg won’t dare to hit him in public because it’ll get her in trouble with the hospital, but at this point, she’s really willing to risk it.

She’s about to shout at him when the last voice she thought she’d heard comes floating at them:

“Hey! She told you to let go!”

Meg’s first thought is that the exhaustion is making her hallucinate. That can’t possibly be Dean, charging towards them like a bull. She’s seeing that wrong. What the fuck is he even doing there? She sneaks a glance at Luc, only to make sure she isn’t the only one seeing this. Her ex is really annoyed by the interruption, his lips tightening in a single thin line.

“This isn’t any of your business.”

“It is, because that’s my sister you’re harassing,” Dean growls.

At this point, Meg is so completely lost that she barely registers that too many things are going on: Dean just called her his sister for the first time in… ever. Not only that, it turns out he’s not alone: coming up behind him, are Benny and Sam, who, for some reason, is carrying a flower pot with him.

What a strangely detailed hallucination.

“Didn’t your mother tell you to back off when a lady asks you to?” Benny chastises him in his signature Southern drawl.

“I would do what they say,” Sam suggests, more diplomatically. “We’ve had a very long night.”

Luc still hesitates. It apparently goes against his pride to do something just because people are telling him to. But then, the cherry on top of this sundae of weirdness lands: Castiel takes two strides past his friends and stands right up in Luc’s face.

“You will let go,” he says. He’s never look more menacing. “Right this instant.”

Luc’s face goes completely red and Meg sees him curl up his free hand in a tight fist. She knows what he’s about to do and she reacts on pure instinct.

The yelp that falls of Luc’s mouth when her foot impacts against his shin is anything but dignified. He releases her wrist in his shock and stumbles backwards, his eyes almost popping out and his mouth hanging open, as if he cannot believe Meg actually dared to do this. She hears some the rumor of laughter in the back and knows that no one is about to tell on her for this.

“I said we’re done, Luc,” she repeats firmly, standing between him and Castiel. “Now, kindly fuck off.”

Luc stares at her one more time, still with utter disbelief, before he turns tail and finally leaves her alone. More laughter from the nurses that gathered to watch the entire thing follow him out of the hospital’s door. Meg shakes her head and finally looks at the four burly men standing in the lobby. So she’s definitely not hallucinating them.

“What the hell?” she asks, looking at every one separately trying to make sense of that entire thing. “What are you doing here?”

Castiel is so busy glaring at Luc’s back he almost startles when he realizes Meg asked him a direct question.

“Oh,” he mutters, looking at her like he’s also only just realizing what’s going on. His clothes are creased as if he slept on them and his hair looks like even more of a mess than usual. “Well…”

Sam takes a step forwards and puts the pot in his hands before stepping away again. Meg is about to ask toxicological tests for all of them when she realizes what kind of flower it’s in the pot: a sunflower.

Her favorite.

“What’s going on?”

Castiel clears his throat and squares his shoulder.

“Meg, I know I told you that I didn’t think it was a good idea for us to rekindle our relationship,” he says. It sounds a little like he rehearsed it. “But I’ve been thinking and I… I wasn’t being truthful when I told you that. I would like us to get to know each other. All over again.”

He extends the sunflower towards her.

Meg has to take a second to take in everything he’s saying.

“You… you drove all night, all the way here just to tell me that?”

“Dean said you would appreciate the grand romantic gesture,” Castiel mutters.

“Did he now?” Meg asks. Over Castiel’s shoulders, Dean has his eyes fixed on the ceiling, as if he’s trying to pretend he isn’t here. “And where did you even get that?” she adds, pointing at the sunflower.

“It was… not easy,” Castiel admits. “But it turns out there are twenty-four hours flower shops.”

Meg burst into laughter. It really is the only thing she can do at this point. She laughs so hard her stomach hurts and for a second, Castiel seems lost. Then, slowly, a smile blooms on his lips, followed by several chuckles that soon turn into a full body laugh. Meg realizes they’re laughing like idiots in a very public part of her workplace, but the only way she can think to make it stop is grab him by the lapels of his shit and pull him in for a hungry kiss. Castiel breathes out and then kisses her back, one hand holding on to the back of her head while the other still holds up the sunflower.

“What the devil’s going on here?”

They break apart and Meg looks at her Crowley, who just walked in and it’s glaring at them with a mixture of bewilderment and disgust.

“Good morning, boss,” Meg says, shooting him her most innocent smile. “Uh… my boyfriend and I were just leaving.”

She grabs Castiel’s hand and drags him towards the door before Crowley can ask another question. She trusts Dean, Sam and Benny will be smart enough to follow suit. She starts laughing again as soon as the cool morning air hits her face and Castiel does the same right by her side.

Well, the nurses will definitely have something to gossip about now.


End file.
